


It's Very Easy To Be True

by cantodelcolibri



Series: night is dark and day is light [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Bad Flirting, But only for a bit, Canon Autistic Character, F/F, Mutual Pining, One-Sided Attraction, Reaper is sad, Sombra speaks spanish sometimes, after the one sided thing, or she tries to be at least, pero no se preocupen soy mexicana no hay nada de google translate aqui, so does gabe, theyre lesbians yall and soms a terrible person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 00:11:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10058426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cantodelcolibri/pseuds/cantodelcolibri
Summary: Trust was not something Sombra ever could afford, except when it came to trusting herself to know what made someone tick. Hack them, use them, leave them.Trust was what Satya lost the day her eyes were opened to the truth behind her employer's motives. All that she thought she knew fell to pieces around her, and all she knew now was that the sugar skull was to blame.To blame, or to thank. Or maybe to trust instead.





	1. The Shadow Steps Into the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this one’s title is actually from actual Johnny Cash  
> This’s part of a series, but ima try my best to write it so you can read it as a standalone!  
> See end notes for translations

She didn’t grow up alone. 

She grew up surrounded on all sides by noise, despair, decay. Crumbling buildings already weakened by poor construction- result of a government long corrupted by too much greed to funnel money into any public housing prior to the war. Dirty streets and roads cracking under militarized vehicles, too many bodies to dispose of quickly. Her parents were among them, dead when the omnics targeted humanity’s weapons factories. At school they went through the motions, same as any drill and any attack that came before. She had gone home expecting nothing different. An elderly neighbor had been the one to break the news to her and a couple of the neighborhood kids. She had thought her family lucky when her parents secured work in the only steady job in town. 

Her dad had always joked that he and her mom would work themselves to death, but she didn’t think he had meant it so literally. If her mom had kept to the city office and her dad to the fields, they wouldn’t have been in the factory. But war profiteers paid better than the government, and there was nothing quite like the look on her parents’ faces when she managed to do something clever with the technology they could afford.

Suffice to say that none of her toys survived her grief save one. 

When social services finally got around to rounding up all the strays, she already had the essentials packed. Clothes and a blanket, her pillow, a toothbrush, canned food, soap, her mother’s can of dry shampoo. Family memories locked away and encrypted so that no one but herself would have access should her new caretakers insist on snooping on the one tablet she brought along.  

She didn’t reach adolescence alone.

Her childhood was spent in orphanages and scarcely funded schools. On the streets, loitering around bus terminals with other snot-nosed kids her age trying to make a living selling soggy tacos out of handkerchief lined pots. In internet cafes dotting smaller towns untouched by the war, self-sustaining and safe save for the noticeable lack of law enforcement. In militarized green’s place was the omnipotent presence of packs of men on corners, rifles slung on backs without a care. She learned to keep her head down and her mouth shut. She learned to function past her fear. 

Social services caught up with her, she escaped, got caught again and learned how to be smart and erase her tracks. 

Her smarts got her noticed- she made friends that helped keep her hidden in exchange for keeping their efforts hidden in turn. The world’s peacekeeping forces had some very observant eyes. Overwatch’s power spread far and wide, their archangel of a leader became immortalized on posters and Saturday morning cartoons. 

She didn’t grow up alone, and she didn’t make it to adulthood alone. Los Muertos would have you treat them like a family- whether you liked it or not. She did her job, they kept a roof over her head and a pistol in her holster. She made herself irreplaceable, and job security made her bold. Boldness led to recklessness. With her skills, the world became her puppet. Politicians, corporations, the government. Information and ill-kept secrets were the strings that made them dance, and she was untouchable. She had no strings on her. 

Until someone gave a tug, and she was forced to look up at the eyes of someone with too much control.

When she left, she dropped everything and didn’t look back, afraid their eyes would still be watching.

Well, she dropped everything save an ancient tablet she couldn’t bear to part with.

In retrospect, she could pinpoint where she had been stupid. She left a trail of red thread when she got excited, confident no one would be able to pick up the other end and yank. She had been dumb, no other way around it. She grew out of it. She grew out of it alone.

The girl that grew up surrounded by others was gone.

Sombra didn’t emerge from loneliness. Didn’t stop her from losing herself in it, though. 

* * *

 

 _“Puto frío! Puto frío!”_ [1] Sombra yelped and heard her voice get swept away by the howling wind outside. Overwatch’s transport had taken off an hour earlier and she had finally breathed a sigh of relief at no longer having to dodge ugly turret fire or that damn ninja’s seeking arrows. Her camo was only effective for so long. Then she had made an off-the-record visit back to Volskaya Industries, checked up that everything remained to her liking, and hitched a ride with an unsuspecting truck back to the wreckage of the day’s fight.

She kicked the door to the safehouse shut behind her and immediately began jumping from foot to foot, intent on getting some feeling back into her toes. The Russian climate was merciless, and she had grown up in the desert. This assignment was in no way her cup of tea. 

Oh, what she wouldn’t do for a cup of boiling hot tea. She would  _ kill  _ for tea. Or any sort of food that wasn’t ready-made rations supplied by her employers. Tea or hot chocolate. Hot chocolate would be better. Better yet, hot chocolate spiked with something. Or maybe just straight up rompope. She wasn’t picky. 

She stomped the snow from her boots before walking further into the dimly lit shelter, squinting to make out the light and heat controls. 

The lights flickered on overhead and she nearly chipped a nail groping the wall when she tripped over a small step. She rubbed her gloved hands to warm them up and hopped over to where she had left her equipment before she set out that morning. 

She did her usual checks, confirmed nothing had been tampered with by any unexpected Talon drop-ins, and powered up her system.

Humming to herself contentedly, she pulled up a wheeled chair and sat down, then pushed herself off from the edge of the desk to roll to the drawers half the room away. She fished out a bag of spicy chips, pulled her gloves off with her teeth, and began chowing down. 

She opened her recent activity and with a flick, blew the holograms up to surround her as she rolled back to the desk. She powered on her computer and yawned wide, blearily browsing through the news of the day. Or night. Russia got dark so easily that she didn’t know whether or not to count it. 

With a curious look at the clock on the screen to her left, she set a timer to see how long it would take for someone to check in with her seeing as she hadn’t bothered to report in. 

One episode of her Korean drama, ten minutes browsing Jesse McCree’s chat history, one hour combing through the data she had taken from the green ninja during today’s mission, and two cat videos later, her communicator beeped. She waited for the telltale sound of her caller’s breathing before jumping in before he could speak. 

“Hey Gabe.” she chirped.

“I told you not to call me that.” 

“Hey Gabi.” she corrected herself and got a low growl in response. She snorted and flicked up the screen to get her hands free again. It joined another hexagonal holo among many. She pulled up the screen with the cowboy’s text history and resumed her scrolling.  _ “Que hubo?” _ [2]

“The mission was a success, we recovered Widowmaker from Gibraltar.” Came his response. Sombra resisted the urge to snort again. Overwatch had taken Amélie from a terrorist plot in King’s Row almost a month back. Talon hadn’t had the motivation to use any resources to recover her until Sombra showed them Overwatch’s plans to transfer her to a much more secure location that would have been a nightmare to hack. One (admittedly very well programmed) A.I. had little on the UN’s massive security, and Sombra pulled at her web in the spider’s favor when the need arose.

_ “Y que?”  _ she asked, “You want a pat on the back for finally doing your job?  _ No manches, Gabi.” _ [3]

_ “Me quieres explicar qué diablos hacías hablando con ese condenado?” _ [4]

She winced, “Yeesh,  _ que pleito tienes con el que le dices tan feo?”  _ She tried steering the topic away to save herself a headache already knowing it wouldn’t work. Like a dog with a bone, Gabriel was.[5]

_ “Nada que te incumbra, Sombrita.” _ [6]

Ah, there it was. So he had overheard the loud cowboy calling her  _ Sombrita  _ when she called him during Talon’s infiltration. Just her luck. “I was curious! When we were in Hanamura I looked into the neighborhood. Found an article dating back awhile about a cowboy saving a ramen shop and we knew Overwatch was incoming, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to arm myself with knowledge. Hey! Since you knew him, is his name actually Jesse?” 

“What?” Reaper griped in reply. Sombra went on flippantly. 

“I mean, the article was written by a very obvious pseudonym and he’s clearly got  _ something _ for westerns- Jesse James was give enough. I did some more digging- and by the way, his taste in men is just as terrible as yours. Like father like son, I guess- so the McCree bit’s at least understandable, but I can’t trace him further in any system. His mom was undocumented and went by an alias and there’s no trace of the guy they lived with. I need some more clues. Whatcha got for me, Gabi?” She spoke a mile a minute and was rewarded with Reaper’s line going dead. She grinned, pleased to have succeeded in getting him to back off, but irked that Jesse McCree remained a mystery. Or Joel. Whatever the fuck his name was. 

She turned back to the matter at hand: figuring out exactly how much to give Talon regarding the cyborg.

* * *

 

They called her in to hack some politician’s personal email server out of Greece and she jumped at the opportunity to jump on a plane out of Russia. When the job was done and the files delivered, Sombra expected to melt back into the shadows until they needed her again, but her comm pinged to alert her of an incoming order. 

“Oh now what?” she complained, halfway through making plans to Yucatan to join Reaper. 

“She won’t talk.” They told her. Sombra kept her voice neutral and asked what happened with their usual methods of dealing with a recalcitrant Widow. 

“She won’t talk.” They repeated, and she smothered a sigh. She made note of Widowmaker’s location and headed out that same day. 

Spain was close enough to Gibraltar that Sombra had to raise her eyebrows at Talon’s balls. But she shrugged and took a bus to the basement apartment they had Amélie holed away in, then snuck her way past the guards just to get them into trouble and switched out for someone more ‘competent’ within the day. 

She locked them out of Amélie’s room just for good measure. Sure, it would get her yelled at, but what were they going to do to her? They had nothing to threaten her with. 

She did a quick sweep of the room and froze the only camera right before she made it into its line of vision. Amélie was sitting still as a statue in a corner of the room, staring blankly up at the ceiling. Sombra strode over jauntily, flashing a quick salute.

_ “Bonjour, ma petite araignée!” _ [7] she said with a terribly exaggerated accent. Amélie didn’t even blink. Sombra flopped down on the ground next to her and pulled up her holo screens again, not caring that the spider had a full view. It was nothing important. She minimized the only incriminating one- files she had managed to unearth from Grand Mesa without Reaper taking notice. Gabriel was the only one else that could manage to get anything out of Widowmaker, and he had gone ahead to Mexico without them. 

They sat in mostly silence. Sombra threw out one comment or another on whatever she was doing. Bored, she hacked into Athena’s network again and searched for the cowboy’s phone. She read his texts aloud to an unamused sniper. 

“This fool’s either really fucking bad at flirting, or the ninja’s more of an idiot than he looks. This is disgusting. Do you want to keep reading this? Or should I get access to the cute one’s- that British girl? The orange one? Or the angel? Are you still straight? Should I go for another one of the guys instead?” Sombra asked, but got no reaction from Amélie. She pouted, but flicked that particular screen over to her so that she could keep reading if she so wished. 

Meanwhile, the hacker went back to work. 

She got quite deep into the forums of a new web series when Amélie finally spoke up. 

“Sombra.” 

Sombra looked up. Amélie nodded at her lone screen.

It had been compromised. 

“Hold that thought, Amé. I gotta take this.” She held up a finger to stem Amélie’s nonexistent conversation and transferred all her attention to the screen that was blinking a warning at her. She dragged it down in front of her and noticed when Amélie’s eyes followed its path. 

_ “Que rayos?” _ [8] Someone had figured out they had a visitor on the network. She checked that her location remained hidden and then went about figuring out how they had caught on. The cowboy’s files hadn’t said he was a hacker. How the hell-?

“Let’s see what we’ve got.” she muttered and accessed McCree’s camera. 

The face that was squinting down at her was definitely not the cowboy. She could make out the red of his sarape in the background, but that was unimportant when an idol’s face took up most of the video feed.

Sombra would recognize Lúcio Correia dos Santos’ face anywhere. She had his entire discography downloaded. Illegally, of course. The singles whose proceeds had gone to charity had their due amounts donated anonymously. She was looking into Vishkar as a side project specifically for the attention he had brought to the problem. 

His mouth was moving, and Sombra excitedly gave herself access to the microphone. Amélie shifted closer to watch.

“-me hook it up to my system, man. I can’t do much from this. Or maybe… Hey Vaswani? Can you bring your computer up from the labs?” 

“If your equipment fails, we will use mine. But I’d prefer for it to be a last measure.” said a tense voice from off-screen. 

“Hey Athena!” called out McCree, or Joel, or whoever the fuck he was. “You get anything yet?” 

“All of my attempts are being blocked, I’m getting signals from different locations every time I try, without any noticeable pattern.” replied the A.I. Sombra grinned with well deserved pride.

“Mother of fuck all.” The cowboy cursed with feeling. “Reckon they know what we’re doin’?” 

“You do not think it’s the… shadow?” asked the voice offscreen. A woman with a low, commanding voice. McCree answered too quietly to be picked up over Lúcio’s tinkering. 

Sombra hummed. “Should we make ourselves known?” she asked the woman casually leaning against her. 

She didn’t answer. Sombra figured as much. Lúcio’s face disappeared and all she saw was a white tiled floor until brown fingers wrapped over the camera. The phone’s new carrier repositioned the device in her hand, and Sombra’s eyebrows shot up her forehead. 

Vishkar’s involvement with Overwatch’s resurgence was easily accessible information in the right circles- and the UN hadn’t been very secretive about the attendants to their hearing months back. Satya Vaswani’s place on Overwatch’s roster wasn’t a surprise. 

But her face was. 

Her skin was rich, darker than her own. Her jet black hair was parted down the center and disappeared behind her shoulders, which were shrouded in a cyan blue material that matched the crystals that hung twinkling from her ears. Long, graceful neck. Jawline so defined it could be carved from stone. Her face was stern, brow furrowed and lips pursed in concentration as she fiddled with the phone’s screen. 

“Sombra.” Widowmaker said dryly. Sombra cleared her throat and opened a new holo to run a search through Vishkar’s network. 

“Nah, this isn’t working. I’ll gather what we need. Should we let Winston know what we’re doing? He’ll be down in the labs when we go to grab Vishkar’s stuff.” Lúcio asked, and Satya nodded slowly. 

“To keep anything hidden from one’s superiors is a violation of trust.” 

“Speakin’ of that…” the cowboy’s voice was tinged with suspicion. Satya’s face fleetingly showed annoyance. 

“This has nothing to do with my assignment. If the need does not arise for me to report to my superiors at Vishkar, they will not hear about this.” 

“That’s not very reassuring.” Lúcio complained and McCree started nudging them out of the door.

“If I isolate it, it won’t be a problem.” Satya reassured them as they presumably made their way to Watchpoint Gibraltar’s labs. Sombra knew she was beginning to play with fire. She should pull out and erase her trace- but curiosity and Amélie’s thinly veiled interest kept her in place. 

When they got too close, Sombra took Amélie’s grunt of warning to heart and cut them off at the quick. 

The guards were rotated, the door forced open, and Sombra got reassigned.

* * *

 

 

She was in London when she received another alert. She was in Texas when she sat down and painstakingly waded through code and transmissions to clear all communication between her and Joel/Jesse/James' stupid fucking phone. 

She was in Guerrero when her alert pinged again. 

She didn’t expect the architech to keep prodding once she had cut the connection. Little peeks showed Lúcio and the cowboy were no longer with her when she tried to trace Sombra’s location. 

She was a persistent little shit. Tunnel vision. One track mind. Whatever the fuck it was called.  

After the fourth day of tracing attempts, Sombra frowned and dug out her files on Vishkar. 

Satya Vaswani- the best architech to come out of Vishkar’s Academy in Utopaea. Highest ranking too- reporting only to Sanjay Korpal. Trained since childhood, present for the incidents in Rio de Janeiro. Instigator, if the security videos that bounced off a satellite that Sombra managed to track down meant anything. 

“Bad girl.” Sombra tutted, and began typing. 

Clever and talented, analytical and dangerous. Architech and Overwatch agent of the highest caliber with a less than pristine ledger. 

Gathering the files she already had on Vishkar was short work. After all, Vishkar’s current conquest was a direct aftereffect of LumériCo’s inevitable downfall. All that was left was to arrange all the information into convincing blackmail.

Blackmail never took much convincing. 

Maybe it was time to make another friend. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: 
> 
> [1]Fucking cold! Fucking cold!  
> [2]What’s up?  
> [3]So? You want a pat on the back for finally doing your job? You’ve gotta be joking, Gabi.  
> [4]You wanna explain to me exactly what you were doing talking to that asshole?  
> [5]Yeesh, what’s your damage with him, calling him something so rude?  
> [6]None of your business, Sombrita  
> [7]Hello, my little spider  
> [8]What the hell?
> 
> Thank you for reading!


	2. Eight Classic Forms of Denial

Eichenwalde was quiet. 

A picturesque village suspended in time, its wounds kept from scarring over and healing. The remains of robots and humans alike scattered lifeless among the weeds and crumpled against crumbling walls. 

Satya stepped over an outflung limb of one such corpse and frowned.  

“Wotcher!” Lena’s voice called out, high pitched and stretched out as she came out of a blink. Satya felt a breeze pass by her right shoulder and Tracer appeared behind her to peer around Reinhardt to look at the rubble he was sifting through. “Whatcha got there, love?”

The knight stopped his careful search, and Satya reflected that the big man treated most things with a lot more tenderness and care than she would expect from someone of his size. He whispered his answer to Tracer, lifting what looked to be a human femur from a thorny bush. Satya redirected her gaze to the group bringing up the rear. 

The upstart criminal and the omnic monk strode side by side, making beeps and whistles and odd popping noises to keep their most recent recruit, the lonely Bastion unit, entertained. Or perhaps they were communicating, not that Satya would know. 

Satya didn’t know what she had expected when she accepted the offer extended to her by Reinhardt to take part in this ill-conceived mission to Germany. She hadn’t really thought about it, too flustered by the sudden invitation and Mei and Hanzo’s prodding encouragement to do anything but nod her head. Whatever her reservations had initially been were forgotten in the desire to do well, to do her job. 

But now- 

“Bwee boop bwoooo,” said the walking war machine, and Satya turned back around to follow behind Winston as he cleared their path towards the castle. 

Lúcio laughed and ran forward to face Bastion and begin skating backwards, somehow not tripping on the undergrowth. “That’s right, we’re down in Gibraltar right now. Everyone’ll be real excited to meet you! Wait till you meet Genji, he’s even better at beatboxing than me!”

Now-

“Bwoo  _ chirp whirrr _ beep?” 

“Yeah! He’s this cool cyborg ninja-dude. He’s green where you’re blue- real pretty blue, by the way- and he’s got this dragon-”

- _ Now- _

“Boo doo wee?”  

The architech looked behind to see as Lúcio slowed, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Yeah. I’m not really sure how that works. His brother has two. We just kinda roll with it.” 

“Weeeee woo bwoop?”

“Oh, I don’t know about Hanzo beatboxing.” Then Lúcio grinned and did a combination snap-and-point with his fingers. “Although, I do know that he can rap when he’s drunk.” 

Now, that was news to Satya. But she pushed it aside to investigate at a later time.

Now, she would do as was expected of her regardless of any personal scruples. That was the only constant for her. Her desire to do well, to do good working for those who would see the world become a better, safer place. 

That is what Vishkar worked for, and if Satya could gain influence in her current place of employ, so would Overwatch. ‘Better’ and ‘safer’ required order, which was something Overwatch currently severely lacked. The nonexistent regulation of their recruitment process served as a prime example. The organization’s brand of blind optimism would be sure to lead to complications in the near future.  

Winston did his best, and Satya… supposed she could appreciate that. He was efficient in his line of work, but his speciality did not lie in leadership. The kind-hearted gorilla was not trained for command, however valiant his attempts at it were. For the most part, it was Athena that held Watchpoint Gibraltar together. 

Satya gave it a few months before he caved in to the pressure, and then she would be there to help him turn their team into a more organized unit.  

Starting, perhaps, with the cooking roster and banning anyone bar herself to cook anything they would be tempted to label as ‘curry’. 

* * *

 

She should have acted sooner. 

Lena made a perfect landing on a gusty early afternoon, the air just chill enough to cause her to mildly shiver when she stepped off the transport with Winston at her side. They were speaking of how to control the press once they made their report and the media discovered they had another omnic on the base. The Bastion unit had not proven hostile since their initial meeting and its panicked attempts at self-defense, but that would mean little to those that protested the omnics’ continued free existence. 

While passing the cafeteria with him on their way to the labs to make contact with Geneva, she paused to glance at the flickering board posted right inside the dining hall. She frowned at Hanzo’s neat script below the day’s date. Curry. What was worse, it was listed as  _ beef _ curry. Winston grunted a request for her to hurry, and she walked after him, still quietly pondering the gall anyone would have to taken an Indian dish and then supplant chicken with  _ beef. _

Their former handlers in Geneva were not happy with their new recruits, and unsubtle backhanded threats were made towards questioning their leadership, which only caused Winston an elevated heart rate that prompted Athena to tell him to go walk it off. He apologized profusely, and Satya supposed there was grace in his ability to admit that his strengths did not lie in public speaking. 

Agent Symmetra stayed on the line after Winston had excused himself, doing her job. Playing the part of Vishkar’s mouthpiece, lending her professional opinion and saving the reputation of their decision-making skills.

“If we are to be whom the world looks to as the human-omnic argument escalates,” she said, “Then our organization must be one of equal opportunity.” 

She refuted every point the UN tried bringing up, shooting down concerns and putting into use the long years of debate training she underwent at the Vishkar Academy. Winston returned with a smoothie, and Satya turned off the holo call to report their standing to the Commander. He opened his mouth to speak, no doubt to request that she call in the team for a debrief. 

Then the alarms started blaring, their screeching backed by harsh red lights flashing in warning. 

Satya immediately thought back to weeks before, when a cloud of helicopters had descended upon their base, bringing teleporters and an operative that emerged from smoke, shrouded in the scent of decay. Agent Symmetra had been the final line of defense between the Reaper and the locked cell which had held the Widowmaker, a hard earned captive that had nearly cost Agent Lúcio his life. And Satya had nearly lost her own, unaware that the Reaper could bypass her trap in his non corporeal form. 

“I’ve detected intruders driving some sort of all-terrain vehicle.” Athena awoke on her screen by Winston’s desk. “They have broken the line of the trees and are taking the main road. ETA at two minutes- I’m sorry Winston, my scanners couldn’t pick them out in the foliage.” 

Winston rushed over to his desk to pull up the security cam feeds just as the team started to come online. Satya moved, determined to do her part this time. 

“Tracer here! Where should I head to, big guy?”

“IF TALON BELIEVES WE WILL BE TAKEN BY SURPRISE YET AGAIN, THEY WILL FEEL THE STRENGTH OF MY HAMMER!”

“LET THE COME! I’VE UPGRADED THE TURRETS!” Torbjörn yelled almost loud enough to match the knight. Not a complete hour after landing and already things were plunging into chaos. Satya adjusted the volume level on her earpiece with a grimace. 

“Yo!” The cyborg’s voice came through next, and Satya fussed further with her comm’s controls. “So, funny story-”

“Genji…” Hanzo’s voice popped in. Satya strode over to her own desk, as she was apparently the only agent on base to remember there was a new breach protocol in place. Mei appeared just before she and Winston finalized shutting the door to the labs, hauling off with her ice blaster and fuel tank. The shields were up around their communications tower, and the labs and medbay were locked down. 

“Technically, this is McCree’s fault.” Agent Genji was saying, causing Winston to grunt in confusion. “He’s got seniority, and he authorized the trace.”

“Agent Genji? If you have something to tell us, please be clear.” he ordered. 

“Remember our last day in Japan?” Genji asked. It appeared Winston did, because he groaned and banged his head against the wall. 

“Don’t tell me-” he was interrupted by a loud crash that sounded down the hallways, coming from downstairs. The alarms cut off, futile in how quickly their attackers had arrived.

She remotely began the process of bringing the other half of her one-way teleporter online, should she and Winston need to leave and aid in defense quickly. At his computer, she could see an off-beige vehicle slam against the main doors, and a hunkered over man playing with a stick of dynamite next to… a pig? A pig caricature tattooed onto the enormous stomach of an equally enormous man. 

“We just fixed the outer bay.” She muttered unhappily as another explosion shook the cliffside. 

Lena voiced the same complaint minutes later when Mei arrived on the scene to freeze their intruders, much to the relief of those that had gone to face them- Agents Tracer, Hanzo, Reinhardt, and the Bastion unit. And its little bird. 

“Genji said McCree authorized the faulty- no,  _ obvious _ \- trace on the Junkers in Japan?” Winston bounced a stress ball on his knee. She replied with an affirmative. On one of his screens, Hanzo stood in a cloud of dust as Agents McCree and Pharah pulled up in the ancient truck they used for errands on the back road. 

“Thought so.” He paused, and took a deep breath. Athena popped up on the screen with the feed, perhaps under the impression that if she blocked off the unpleasant view he would calm down. 

“Winston, your blood pressure.” She reminded him cheerfully. 

“Oh, it’s fine. I’m fine.” Winston answered, sitting up and moving off his tire seat. “I’m going to kill him.” He went on in a voice cheerful enough to match the A.I.’s.

Satya swallowed her bid that he refrain from breaking anything else when he disappeared out the newly cleared doors. Athena was reporting that Agent Mercy had opened the medbay again, and all except the front doors maintained their integrity.  

“Hey, Vishkar?” said the voice of the musician from the comm at her ear, his voice the thinly veiled disdain she had long learned to pick out. “Got anything in that hive mind of yours on a hacking collective callin’ themselves ‘Sombra’?” 

Sombra. The hackers that revealed LumériCo’s former CEO Guillermo Portero’s hand in embezzling funds and twisting politics to suit his needs. When his dirty laundry was aired, the Vishkar Corporation’s dealings with them were criminalized, as if they had anything to gain by associating themselves with such self-seeking practices.    

“For what purpose do you ask?” she brought up their nulled contract with LumériCo on her screen to examine what information was available to her. 

“I know your people had their eye on LumériCo’s energy- and that you all had something more goin’ on below the table. But-!” he cut her off before she could contest his false point angrily, “That’s gotta mean your lot is as curious about this Sombra as the rest of the world. Me ‘nd Mac have a proposition for you. We’ll be down in the basement level dealing with these two. Come join us if you want in.” 

Which is how she found herself downstairs in the interrogation pen right as the cowboy’s silver tongue somehow managed to convince Winston to recruit another pair of criminals to their cause. 

“What.” She rubbed at her temples with her visor pulled up, already feeling an oncoming headache. Jamison Fawkes and Mako Rutledge were in the corner of their biggest room, stripped of their weapons- which meant one was without a harness and the other only had his shorts. Satya zeroed in on the pile of their effects in the hallway just outside, eyeing the pins stuck to a kevlar vest. Agent McCree was whistling merrily, some ditty from the heart of Texas, probably. It was obnoxious. He was obnoxious. 

“Oh, I’m just tryin’ to give ‘em the same chance someone gave me. It looked to me like Fawkes there wouldn’t mind an opportunity to go legit. Did you see his eyes? Shit, he’s a bit out there, but I get the feelin’ his heart’s in the right place. The other one’ll follow him wherever.”

“You do not know that.” she said, exasperated. But Winston and Lúcio were already in the talks of dealing with the bounties over their heads- less than the cowboy’s, but nothing meager by far. If they weren’t careful, they were bound to attract bounty hunters now that Watchpoint Gibraltar held more than one prize. Four, counting that what was left of the Shimada Empire still had its eyes on Hanzo.   

“Well they still gotta say yes.” he tapped his metal fingers against the one-way glass. “Ain’t forcin’ no one into this mess.”

“At last, it appears we agree on one point.” 

“And what’s that, darlin’?” he asked. 

“This is a mess.” she said with distaste. She ignore the cowboy’s frown and went to the musician to request he further explain their plan. 

He disclosed that someone working for Sombra had accessed McCree’s handheld during the break-in, information she was already aware of. She also knew the same sugar skull had spoken to their agents in a past mission to Hanamura. But why a global hacking entity would be interested in speaking to the cowboy personally remained a mystery. A mystery that they wanted solved, if only to make sure Athena’s defences weren’t breached again. And finding a hacker that was involved with Talon could prove useful.

“There can be a trace left in his phone. Athena ran basic checks, but you and me can go deeper. Meet us in a bit.” Lúcio finished. Then he looked to the time on his own phone, and ran off citing he had a quick conference call with his record label before dinner.

Winston asked her if she would please go fetch food for the Junkers, and McCree headed back into the room with their… recruits. She didn’t storm off to the kitchens. She walked. Naturally. And rehearsed what she would say to Mr. Korpal when he investigated why she had gone into the archives to investigate  LumériCo.

“They’re being recruited.” she said when she made it into the well-lit kitchen. Hanzo, standing at the line of stove tops, blinked.

“What?”

“Your-” she paused and thought to consider her words. “Your  _ cowboy  _ recruited them. Or tried to. He convinced Winston that their knowledge and  _ criminal prowess  _ could prove useful to us.” She paused to allow him to process the absurdity of it, then went on. “But they haven’t accepted. They will be spending the night in the cells by choice. I am here to pick up their food, and to tell you we will not be attending the usual evening meal. Agents McCree, Lúcio, and I are going to look into a lead we may have regarding the hacker.”

She peered over his shoulder at the concoction in the pot, squinting at the block of ‘curry’ dissolving in the water and vegetables. 

“What is that?” she asked, knowing full well what was written on the board in the next room.

“Curry.” Hanzo said, voice differing from its usual flat tone. Upset?

“That is not curry. If you had alerted me this is what you had planned ahead of time, I could have aided you in-”

“Satya, you can’t cook. You would do well to remember your last attempt.”

Mei had discreetly ordered Thai, and Satya remained convinced the fault was not hers, but instead lay in the lack of quality imported foods in Gibraltar.

“Curry does not have... are these apple peels?” she asked, eyeing red rinds in a bin near the sink.

“Yes.”

“Where are the peppers?”  

He picked up a bright green and yellow box from the counter and held it up for her inspection. “It’s not spicy curry.” 

“No spices?” she inspected the box label in horror. 

“The spices are in the curry block.”

Satya turned to give him a blank stare, which he took with ease.   

“You have not added the meat yet?” she asked. Hanzo shook his head and nodded his head at the smaller pot.

“I will in a moment.” he said as he kept stirring, and then did as said and reached for the pot. Satya jerked forward, stopping just short of touching his shoulder. He paused, neck twisting to look back at her questioningly. 

“I do not eat beef, and one of the Junkers is vegetarian.” 

“Jamison?” 

She shook her head. “No, I believe it’s the other one, Mako.”  

Hanzo stared at her, and she didn’t react. He walked off to rummage through the bottom cupboards for another pot, then went to turn on another burner to place it atop of. She helped him ladle some portions out of the main pot into the new one, and moved over to tend to the rice when the industrial sized rice cooker pinged. 

She stayed until the team started trickling in and only left when Athena requested she return to the basement levels with her errand. After that, Lúcio messaged her to meet in his room in the dorm wing. She swung by the dining room again to pick up her own plate before going up to join them. 

As soon as she approached, the door slid open obediently to let her in. Athena’s doing, she expected. She saw McCree hunkered over typing at his phone, making Lúcio’s standard sized bed look miniscule underneath him, his plate of curry forgotten on the bedside table. Lúcio was sitting at his desk, chatting with Athena.

“Hey Lu…” called McCree just as Satya opened her mouth to announce herself. 

“Yeah? Oh, hey Vaswani.”

“My phone’s doin’ somethin’... weird.” said the cowboy. 

“You didn’t get a virus, did you?” Lúcio swiveled in his chair, straddled the back, and scooted forward to McCree on his bed. Satya created herself a stool out of hard light with her free hand and sat down to eat the sweet concoction on her plate. 

“No!”

“If you’re watching porn in my bedroom, dude-”

“I’m texting Hanzo n’ Genji! Look, it froze and said I can’t access my dropbox from two devices simultaneously.”

“Shit man, I think Athena’s been hacked.” Lúcio swiped the phone from his hand and attached it to a device from his glove, which sprouted a holo keyboard. Athena announced she would run a check on her firewall. “Shit. This the first time you’ve noticed this?” 

“Eh, the scroll thing gets weird sometimes, but otherwise, nothin’.” 

Lúcio muttered something, not in English. Satya quickly finished off her plate and set it on her stool to go over and look at what he was doing. “I may need you to let me hook it up to my system, man. I can’t do much from this. Or maybe…” Lúcio turned to look at her once she stopped at his side. “Hey Vaswani? Can you bring your computer up from the labs?”

“If your equipment fails, we will use mine. But I’d prefer for it to be a last measure.” she said tersely. 

“Hey Athena!” said McCree, “You get anything yet?”

“All of my attempts are being blocked, I’m getting signals from different locations every time I try, without any noticeable pattern.” replied the A.I. 

“Mother of fuck all.” The cowboy cursed. “Reckon they know what we’re doin’?”

“You do not think it’s the… shadow?” she asked. Lúcio rolled back to his desk, pulled out a thin cable and used it to bolster the connection between his computer and the phone. He passed the handheld off to Satya. 

McCree peered at Lúcio’s screen with a grimace. “I’m pretty sure it’s her.” 

Satya turned the phone over and ran her prosthetic hand over the chat log on the screen, ignoring when a new reply notification popped up from someone whose name in McCree’s contacts was set as ‘Archer’. 

So, Hanzo then. Lúcio let out a frustrated huff and threw his hands up. Satya looked up.   

“Nah, this isn’t working. I’ll gather what we need. Should we let Winston know what we’re doing? He’ll be down in the labs when we go to grab Vishkar’s stuff.” Lúcio asked, and Satya nodded slowly.

“To keep anything hidden from one’s superiors is a violation of trust.”

“Speakin’ of that…” the cowboy’s face depicted textbook suspicion. Satya swallowed a surge of annoyance.

“This has nothing to do with my assignment. If the need does not arise for me to report to my superiors at Vishkar, they will not hear about this.”

“That’s not very reassuring.” Lúcio complained, and McCree started nudging them out of the door.

“If I isolate it, it won’t be a problem.” Satya reassured them as they made their way to the labs. They passed Bastion and Mei in the hallway hauling bags of soil and fertilizer out of a minor storehouse.  

In the end, they weren’t able to track down the hacker. Their trace disappeared without, well… without a trace. 

Winston, invested in their project, took McCree’s phone and promised him a new one in the morning. McCree propositioned that Winston find them some excuse to go down to Dorado to see if the Muertos who had so benefited from Sombra’s prior work had any knowledge of their, and this particular hacker’s, whereabouts. As if by fate, Athena brought up a plea in their inbox from the Mexican government asking for a taskforce to interfere in case the Los Muertos gang showed up to LumériCo’s final attempt at launching their clean energy enterprise in the next month.

Overwatch was going to Dorado. 

* * *

 

“Can you confirm that Overwatch will be going to Dorado?” Sanjay Korpal asked her later that night, his holo call automatically connected by her Vishkar issued communicator. 

Satya paused at her window, where she had been braiding her hair in preparation for bed. 

“Yes.” She slid smoothly into her seat at her desk and plucked her headset from its stand to put it on. Korpal’s small holo tapped his foot thoughtfully.  

“The Vishkar Corporation no longer has any pull with the UN concerning Overwatch’s mission roster. Have you been considered for the team?” he asked just as her visor went up over her eyes. 

“No. When Agent McCree convinced Commander Winston to accept the job, neither Agent Lúcio nor I made a case to be included.” Satya pulled up Winston’s records for the day on her computer. The files that held LumériCo’s request were beside the agent list, with McCree’s icon at the helm. Beneath him were three other confirmed agents. “Those confirmed as going on the mission are as follows: Agents Hanzo, Mercy, and Pharah. Led of course by Agent McCree.” 

“Make sure you’re on that list by tomorrow, Satya. We still have interest obtaining LumériCo’s support in exporting their energy systems to our compounds. The efficiency of such plants would only bolster the standard of living in our compounds, Symmetra. But we need for them to do well this time before drawing up another contract. We need you. We need someone there to leave a good impression and to assure the good people of Dorado that we will be there to help in the future.”  

“I understand.” she said. 

“We have planned for another compound within the Mexican southeast.” Korpal went on, “If Overwatch can deal with Los Muertos and you can keep relations open, then we will be well underway to help the people of Dorado just as we have those in Rio.”  

“I understand.” she repeated.

* * *

 

The next morning, she passed the blonde medic in the hallway pulling along the cyborg by the horned antennae of his visor. She stepped into the kitchen, already made aware of Hanzo’s location by Athena. 

Hanzo was red in the face, odd given the early hour. He greeted her pleasantly enough, but she still thought he looked somewhat tense. 

“Your cowboy.” she said, and Hanzo looked behind them to where said cowboy was. “He is leading the mission to Dorado.” 

“Yes.” Hanzo answered her. She nodded. 

“Would he allow me to take part in the mission?” 

Hanzo blinked slowly at her. He leaned slightly closer, peering at her in what was maybe confusion? Perhaps concern. Or maybe he was nervous, just as she was. 

“You wish to join us?” 

“Yes.” 

He turned around to where McCree was flipping pancakes expertly, ruddy face sweating slightly from the close proximity to the stovetop. He asked if Satya could join the team. McCree agreed readily, and Satya’s job was done. She fixed her own breakfast, turned down the cowboy’s invitation to pancakes, and headed to the labs to begin her day’s work on schedule. 

Check on her experiments. Check. 

Complete the training range’s simulations catered to her honing technology. Check. 

She returned to the lab and saw McCree’s phone lying in a plastic bag on Winston’s desk. She ignored it and went to help Mei stabilize a new formula to increase the durability of her ice walls. 

Answer and forward an email from Geneva. Break for lunch. Mei pulled Hanzo and herself to the loading bay to watch as she, Torbjörn, and the Bastion unit started to build the perimeter for a garden overlooking the sea. 

Winston left her in charge of clearing Athena’s backlogs. All the while, she kept suppressing the urge to glance down at McCree’s old phone. It stayed, an annoyance planted at the corner of her consciousness, impossible to uproot no matter how down her daily checklist she went. 

“Winston.” she asked in the evening, when he was getting ready to climb onto his loft for the night. 

“Yes?”

“May I make another attempt to trace the location of the hacker?” she gestured at the phone with an open palm. Winston followed the motion with his eyes, then shrugged. 

“Sure, go ahead. Alert Athena of anything you find.” 

“Understood.” she said, and reached out a hand when Winston walked forward to drop it off before he left. 

* * *

 

Nothing.

* * *

 

Somewhere in southern United States, or northern Mexico. Perhaps Chihuahua. She managed to triangulate a slight ping for half a second that didn’t bounce back wildly. 

* * *

 

Southern Mexico, along the west coast. She was sure of it. She let Athena know, and the A.I. felt more confident in their decision to willingly wade into LumériCo’s scandal if it got them closer to one of Talon’s assets. 

* * *

 

She left McCree’s phone in the lab in its plastic bag every night when she turned in for the night. She went down to the end of her daily checklist, prioritizing checking in on her private Vishkar Corporation device in case Korpal had anything further to say with the Dorado mission only a week away. 

Upon turning the screen on, she saw no new messages and frowned. Vishkar had steadily decreased the frequency with which they contacted her, leaving messages or opening calls only when they had specific need of her. No more were the daily check-ins and the weekly replies to the reports she made sure to send in anyway. Korpal assured her it was for the sake of keeping company secrets, since they couldn’t trust her teammates to respect her right to privacy. 

She powered down the screen, set her white Vishkar handheld on the desk next to her grey Overwatch one, and climbed into bed. 

After she closed her eyes, she heard a hum and saw a faint glow coming from the side through her eyelids. 

Determined to fall asleep and get a full eight hours, she ignored it. But it persisted. The hums of one of the comms vibrating against her desk making a faint noise that went from annoying to  _ unbearable _ in just a few turns. 

She sat up, stood, and reached over to swipe at the comm responsible- the grey one. She pulled her finger back to jab at the screen when she froze. 

The screen was purple, the neon hue backlighting a bright white skull. 

_ “Ahi estas.” _ [1]

Suddenly her holo feature turned itself on, the screen widening to its fullest extent, taking up half her room. Satya dropped the phone in alarm, taking a step back to come out from the holo’s midst. 

In front of her were headlines, Vishkar’s debut in Brazil. A picture of her at Sanjay’s side during Overwatch’s UN meeting in New York to combat the Petras Act. The explosion in Rio de Janeiro following her investigation of Calado, reports of Utopaea’s residents, a picture of Lúcio’s fist raised to the sky surrounded by people of the  _ favela. _ Files on botched experiments in outfitting artificial intelligence to manipulate hard light. Templates of long-range teleporters they were developing in spite of international regulations while their fleet of lawyers worked to loosen them. Charges against them for damage in an aborted structure in Sri Lanka, quoting endangerment to the balance of the local ecosystem. Similar complaints in Bangladesh, with desecration of sacred land. Those last two had been dealt with swiftly and never made it to the public on a global scale. All done in the promise of bettering the lives of all under their care. All in the name of a better future. All instances with her name attached.

She stared, rage bubbling in her gut.

“Have I got your attention,  _ linda? Bueno, _ I’ll make this short and sweet.” said a female voice from the comm on the floor. “We’re going to be friends, you and I. And I need you to stop annoying the shit out of me. Got it?”[2]

“Who are you?” she questioned, voice hard and with little inflection. 

“Oh I’m sure you already know.” said the sugar skull. 

“Sombra.” 

“Ding ding ding! And she’s smart, too!” That was condescension in her voice. Satya sneered. 

“Are you under orders from Talon to threaten us? Or is your collective working alone? Overwatch will not-” 

_ “Relajate, chica. _ This isn’t Talon, I’m not a collective, and I’m not threatening Overwatch, I have bigger fish to fry. No. I’m threatening y- Oh. Uh.” The woman let out a short bark of a laugh, thoroughly amused at something. “ _ Oye chula, _ you may wanna pick up the phone. I just turned on your camera and you’re kinda giving me a view.”[3]

Satya instinctively backed further away, smoothing down the skirt of her nightshift as she went. Angry, indignant and sputtering. “How dare you!” 

Another laugh. “I turned it right back off! Sorry, sorry! Most people hold their phones, you know. I thought I’d get your face like the other times.” 

“The other times!?” 

“Well you were trying to do the same thing, not my fault I’m better at the hacking game than you,  _ cariño.” _ [4]

“I was trying to find your location, not access your-” 

“Oh please, like you wouldn’t have taken the opportunity to peek if you gained access to a camera. Now where’d you go? All I’m seeing is what I already know.” 

Satya bristled, but glanced back at information that would be wholly incriminating to her and her employer should it get out. “I am not showing myself unless you show your face in turn.” 

“Ah ah ah. That’s not how this works,  _ preciosa. _ I’m the one blackmailing you.”[5]   

“What interest am I to you?” 

“Pick up the phone, then we can chat. Or I can give someone a tip-off when I lower Vishkar’s defenses.”

Satya huffed, then moved forward to dip down and snatch the phone up. She had half a mind to put her thumb over the lense, but instead she glared at the blue light that indicated her camera was on. 

“That’s more like it. Now to answer your question- you don’t seem the kind to be too keen on suddenly having a bounty on your head once Vishkar topples and your handler falls off his pedestal at headquarters. Oh Vishkar’s good. They send the results they want to Korpal down the grapevine. And he’s the mastermind, as you very well know.” Sombra explained. “See, I’ve had my eye on Vishkar ever since a certain star brought their… questionable methods on the global stage. And in every altercation they’ve had with the public, they brought along their team of talented architechs- none as talented as you. And you, obedient thing that you are, always do as ordered.” 

“Get to your point.” 

“My point is  _ linda, _ that you do all their dirty work. Sure, you didn’t develop their sound tech, and you’ve got nothing to do with the pay-offs, and the lying, and the murders-” 

“The Vishkar Corporation does not deal in  _ assassinations!” _ she fought to keep her voice quiet, not to wake the entire base with the vicious slander this woman was trying to paint as truth. 

“Calado was a good man, Agent Symmetra. And look what you did to him.” 

“I didn’t-!” 

“Oh I know you didn’t.” In front of her flashed a new screen, on its surface played a video of her in the cyan blue of her battle uniform, the petals of her projector fanned out around a ball of energy as she took aim to take down the agents she had been too distracted to see coming. “That Calado’s alive is nothing. Do you know the body count of the citizens that died after your little stunt in the offices?” Sombra’s voice took on a hard edge. Angry. “Do you know how many you killed?” 

Satya felt calm wash over her. Sombra knew nothing. She was just like Lúcio, those that conspired against them in fear of change, even if it was for the better. “The explosion at Calado’s holdings is unrelated to my interference that night. The Vishkar Corporation had nothing to do with it. A gas leak-” 

“A gas leak?!” Sombra outright yelled at her. Satya winced and hoped the walls were thick enough to keep her neighbors from listening in. She could still hear Zaryanova’s snores however, and Fareeha often fell asleep in the communal areas. “A gas leak doesn’t crumble an entire fucking building in the course of a couple of minutes, Vaswani! Is this what you are? Just another one of Vishkar’s compound speakers, spouting drivel you’ve conditioned others into accepting?” She stopped. Satya heard huffing breaths from the speaker as a new wave of links appeared on the holo. Fluctuating exchange rates, change to local law and sudden complacency in those that lived in Vishkar’s radius despite their previous fervent protest. 

Because they were happy now. Satya knew that. They had no more reason to protest now that Vishkar was there to show them how much better things could be.

Then a final document floated in, stamped red and official. Orders to discontinue the lower ranked architechs’ work towards building new shelter in the same favela they had built the city center in. 

“Look, dumbass, I know exactly what you’re all about. I know your endgame, and I know it’s no coincidence that the real has dropped in value ever since the people in Rio were forced to take employment under Vishkar. That little bubble of a favela is one example of many- how your company plops down then steals resources and uses conditioning to get free labor.” 

At her words, Satya broke out of the small trance she had fallen in. 

“Oh please.” she scoffed, “A hacker of your caliber could falsify any information you like. If you picked up on our initial attempts at finding you, you would have had more than enough time to prepare this slew of lies.”

The woman on the line went silent, then blustered an incredulous, “Lies?!” 

“If any of this were true, I would have known of it.” Satya said, repeating what she was screaming at herself in her mind. It was a lie. 

It had to be a lie. She attended the meetings at Korpal’s side, she knew everything he did. Until recently, she had never left his side. 

Never been allowed to. 

He heard everything she did too. But what if he heard more? 

No. It was a lie. A lie, a clever lie meant to scare her. A threat. Blackmail based on nothing other than an easily falsified document and conspiracies disproven by their lawyers time and time again. 

Meaningless.   

“Holy shit. Ho-o-o-ly shit.” Sombra whispered. “You’re a puppet.” 

Satya stared down at the white skull on the screen in her hand. 

“I am not.” 

“You’re a puppet. I can see your face. I can see your doubt. You’re a puppet,  _ linda, _ and we’re friends now. Friends help friends. So you help me, and I help you. New deal. What do you know about Vishkar’s new deal with LumériCo?” 

Satya’s first instinct was to bite a retort, to insist she wasn’t going to give her anything. “There isn’t one.” she said instead. 

Another laugh. A longer one, and it grated on Satya’s already thin nerves. 

“New deal.” she said again, “Mutual benefit, I assure you. I pull your head out of your ass and you assist me with what I wanted in the first place. I’ll see you in Dorado.” 

The white skull disappeared. Her screen faded to black and Athena’s logo came back on. The holo folded in on itself. Satya stood at the edge of her bed and felt- 

Felt. 

She- 

She went back to bed. 

She placed the comm back on its spot at the edge of her desk. She buried herself under her blankets and toyed absently with the end of her braid. Trying to clear her mind even as it raced a mile a minute. 

A lie. A lie. It had to be a lie. Sombra had said it herself. Blackmail. A threat. Any truth she knew in her heart would be meaningless if such inflammatory lies made it to the public. 

_ Puppet. _

But what reason would she have to lie?

That Korpal decided to break his silence just as news came in that Overwatch had accepted Mexico’s cry for help could not be a coincidence. It had to be a coincidence. 

It couldn’t be a coincidence. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Storytime- half a year ago or so a bunch of Indian exchange students came to our little corner of japan and there was this whole Event where they went to one of the elementary schools i work at and helped the kids harvest a bunch of foodstuffs (cuz there’s a field right on the grounds). And as thank you, my students were like “We’ll cook lunch for you! Wait a little bit!” and sweethearts they are, decided curry was The Way To Go cuz they knew it’s Indian and They GOT THIS. Now Japanese curry is. Sweet. It’s one of the kids’ favorite meals cuz it’s warm and sweet and filling. And has beef in it.  
> Now imagine their dismay upon serving it up and discovering the exchange students couldn’t eat it cuz they were Hindu. They ordered a bunch of bentos instead.
> 
> Translations!  
> [1]There you are  
> [2]Have I got your attention, lovely? Good, I'll---  
> [3]Relax, girl. ----- Hey honey  
> [4]darling  
> [5]precious  
> 


	3. Se dice en el barrio

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kiuuuboleeeee güey adivina quién regreso????
> 
> see end notes for translations

From a high enough vantage point, the little Veracruzano town of Dorado seemed quiet and picturesque. Among the red clay tile roofs and artisanal shops and old-fashioned architecture, there was no sign of the trouble that lurked in its winding roads and busy streets. All that could be seen was a coastline almost too beautiful to be true, an endless expanse of blue, and a populace that was determined to thrive. Dorado was alight with life. It pulsed with it, a rhythm that bounced between close-knit houses and alleys. People rose with the incoming dawn, doing a very good job of ignoring the Muertos graffiti that invaded a wide portion of too many walls. This was the Muertos’ hometown, and if Sombra were in a better mood, she would tip an imaginary hat and say that maybe this town wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

But she wasn’t in a good mood. Dorado was as familiar as the back of her hand. It was a friendly, happy, cheerful place made up with garlands of marigolds and images of  _ la virgen _ to celebrate the end of the darkness and welcome back the dead. Just like home.

Well, it wasn’t home, but it was close enough.

Her home was probably still buried under rubble, anyway.

Bitterly, she thought of her parents. She thought that maybe, just maybe, she would bring back that era of darkness if it brought them back to her safe and whole. She would tear down the strings of lights being hung up in preparation for the upcoming festival and welcome the dark. Sacrifice Dorado’s newfound light.

Maybe. Just maybe.

_ “Apagando las luces.” _ [1]

LumériCo’s backup security alert didn’t even get the chance to go off when she slipped in through a new ‘window’ on the glass face of the giant ziggurat. Sombra snuck through the power plant, dark but for the strips of light at the edge of the delivery route on the bottom level.

She dropped from a platform, stuck to the outer walls, turned, and walked through a room that was bare except for the messy table at the center. And a security guard, who she unarmed and promptly knocked out. She spied a report with her name on it, grinned, and pulled up a chair. She hummed and set her fingertips to the small screen on the edge of the conference table and lightly kicked the unlucky guard.

_ “Ya llegue. _ They took the bribe- place is practically empty except for a few guards. Nothing you can’t handle,  _ ey Gabi?” _

“Well done, Sombra.”

Sombra snorted at the Reaper’s words. She pointedly ignored the little swell of pride in her chest and remotely opened a set of doors. “It’s open. The core should be in storage.”

From the camera feed she pulled up, she saw Reaper and his little troupe of Talon agents disappear into the depths of LumériCo’s extensive storage facility. They were looking to find and steal the fusion core necessary for the last of LumériCo’s plants to go online.

Talon didn’t care about Dorado, or the Vishkar tech mounted atop LumériCo’s reception towers. What Talon cared about was getting their hands on safe, clean, cheap, and easily managed energy before it got locked inside a fucking modern day pyramid. It was a last minute plan, and Sombra let herself pout that Talon’s sudden decision to take action threw a wrench in her plan to have the architech help her expose Vishkar. Once Reaper got a visual on the core, they’d leave Mexico, and Sombra would have no chance to meet up with her new friend.  

Oh well, no matter. Overwatch and the Mexican government would surely launch an investigation in an effort to retrieve their stolen tech. Maybe she would find her then, apologize for standing her up.

Speaking of which…

_ “Camarón que se duerme…” _ [2] On one of her own screens she had eyes on the transmissions from LumériCo’s tertiary ziggurat just out of town. They were receiving landing requests from a very familiar A.I. She pulled up a map of Dorado and mentally tracked the Overwatch team’s location, but got distracted when Reaper checked back in.

“It’s not here.” Reaper reported. Sombra blinked.

“What?”  

“It’s not here.” Reaper’s repetition prompted their handler, who was thousands of miles away and in a safehouse somewhere in Croatia, to blow a fuse.

His voice joined theirs on the line. “It’s not there? What do you mean it’s not there?! You said-!”

“Yeah, whatever.” She cut everyone out and let their handler prattle on, none the wiser. “Hey, they can’t hear us. LumériCo’s got incoming.”

Reaper grunted at her, not as alone as she was.

“It’s your old friends, Gabi. Their transport’s headed for the resource building downtown. Want to pop over and say hi?”

“Sombra.” Reaper snapped at her. She sighed and put them back on the main line. Then she pulled her translocator beacon out and bent over in her seat to clip it beneath the conference desk.

“-and if we do not get it by tonight, we will be forced to engage with LumériCo’s fucking hires. Twenty-three! Twenty-three of our men died during the Gibraltar infiltration!”

“Well, it was a successful operation.” Sombra straightened up as she told him and got a curse in return.

“Successful your mother’s ass! Twenty-three! Twenty-three trained agents for the life of one botched experiment. She’s not listening to her handlers. We’ve had to put her under again. Again!”

“Have you tried asking nicely?” She quipped to hide her anger, and then she ignored his ongoing rant. She drew up a new screen and projected a keyboard onto the table. “Look, I’m looking okay? But the only way these assholes hid this from me is if they did it through Vishkar’s network or by word of mouth. And you told me not to go poking around in Vishkar’s things.”

“That order still stands. Just,” he gave a frustrated sigh, “Fine. Pull back, get out of there. If it’s not there then there’s no use in hanging around. It’s almost morning, the workers will start showing up soon. Return to your assignments, and do not go poking around downtown. I’m sure you already know, Sombra, but Overwatch just arrived. I’ll contact you once I’ve given my report to the higher ups.”

And with that, he was off the line. Sombra didn’t really notice, she was deep in LumériCo’s communications chain, trying to find a clue as to where the core had been moved. So deep, in fact, that she only looked up when a pair of heavy boots materialized from smoke next to the security guard she was still kicking.

He wasn’t even showing his face, but Sombra knew judgment when it was being directed at her.

“What?” She said.

The barn owl mask nodded down to where her toes were clashing against the guard’s shoulder in a steady beat.

“He tried to taser me!”

The Reaper didn’t say anything. He turned around and beckoned her after him with a clawed finger. She huffed and swiped at the air to store her screens. She made after him with one last look to check that the beacon was hidden under the table.

* * *

 

There was exactly one good thing that came out of their failure at extracting the fusion core from LumériCo’s property, and it was that she wouldn’t have to add to her reputation as a serial date stander-upper.

After discovering that the core was now being held in Dorado’s  _ Mision _ till the next afternoon, she sat on the information all day. If she told Reaper, he’d tell their handler in an effort to get out of Mexico asap. But Sombra had a date.

Not a date, just a meeting with a pretty girl that she was blackmailing, not that said pretty girl even knew when and where they were meeting.

...As far as dates went, it wouldn’t be Sombra’s worst.

She chuckled past the mass of bobby pins held between her lips and finished braiding in the final length of ribbon into her hair. No one in Overwatch had ever laid eyes on her, and she had taken the precaution to distort her voice in her dealings with their members, but it didn’t hurt to take extra measures. The mass of hair and satin hid the majority of her enhancements, and it wouldn’t do to get spotted by any Muertos either. Hair done, she frowned down at the pile of synthetic flowers on the vanity. She picked up a yellow rose and popped the hair clip on the back.

Four flower clips later, and even more of her scalp was hidden. A little bit folklorico, but it got the job done.

_ “Que haces?” _ [3]

Sombra jumped about three feet into the air when Gabriel appeared behind her in the mirror. The yelp she let out was completely justified, and she growled when her elbow sunk into smoke when she shot it back to hit him.

_ “Arreglandome, pendejo. _ Cut it with your ninja shit, fuck! I’m going to get premature greys working with you!”[4]

“It isn’t ninja shit.” The way his jaw hung open just a bit after he finished speaking was disconcerting, but Sombra was used to the grotesqueness of an underfed Reaper behind the mask. “You’re going out.”

Sombra snorted. “Yeah I am. You gonna stop me?”

Gabriel didn’t answer. Sombra snorted again.

“Thought so.”

He leaned back against the bathroom wall, effectively melting back into the shadows. She could barely make out the shape of him highlighted by the neon purple fluorescent bulb tacked over her mirror. It was a gamble letting Gabriel into her hideout. Castillo was far from a fortress. Ask the right handful of people, as she was easy to find. Easier to follow, if one happened to be a smoke monster.

It had been a matter of making a show to Gabriel that she trusted him. It would be easy to relocate if her false trust ended badly.

“The kids out in the park were talking. It seems their favorite boy scout is back in town.” he said.

Sombra paused, eyeliner pen hovering just over her eyelid. She hummed, then applied a bold line halfway down her brow and filled in the wing.

“Then why are you still here?”

“He’s going to be watching. He’s going to be watching  _ them. _ That’s where you’re headed, right? Amelie told me about your interest in that girl.”

_ Chismosa. _ [5]

“It can hardly be considered interest,” she shot back and grabbed a tube of lipstick. “I’m using her to get what I want. And if he’s here, then what  _ you _ want is in jeopardy. I suggest you take care of your old flame before he and I both find out where the fuck LumériCo stashed that core.”

“I’m going with you.”

Sombra smacked her lips together to even out the lipstick. She put away her things and checked her hair from another angle, then turned and booped Gabriel on the nose.  _ “Haz lo que quieras, Gabrielito. _ Just don’t get in my way.”[6]

He tried swatting her hand away. She laughed at his grumble when he didn’t quite manage to solidify his hand and instead his smoke passed right around her. Outside, she kept to the light the streetlamps bathed the sidewalks in, and he dispersed in between cobblestones.

It was a long walk, but Sombra enjoyed it. She tucked both hands into the back pockets of her jeans and took in the view. Dorado was prettiest at night, when the moon shone off the water and the bright colors of the buildings went soft in the dark. Here and there were pockets of life. Parties seen through open doorways, small plazas filled with music and the smell of food. She almost caved when a nice old lady sitting on a stump just outside a bright pink house hailed her and offered her a glass of  _ ponche. _ She waved her off apologetically, citing that she had a date.

“I thought you weren’t interested in her.” Gabe’s snide voice said from the shadows once she was a safe distance away.

“Oh my god,” she groaned.

“Do you even know where they are? Or am I following you for nothing?”

“My sources say they’re down in the  _ Mision’s _ plaza.”

“Your sources?” Reaper reformed himself next to her and kept in stride.

“My sources,” she formed a holo screen with her fingertips. There were small video icons from various traffic cams. She maximized the one that showed a lively band playing at the edge of a fountain, and a group of Overwatch agents disguised as tourists waiting in line at a food vendor. She closed the holo just as they closed the distance to their destination, and Gabriel went back to being his smokey self.

When they reached the main plaza, Sombra went right in to mingle with the crowd, scanning for a dark-haired architech.

She found Symmetra standing next to Overwatch’s archer and gunslinger to the side of a food stall, eyeing the angel doctor and the former Helix agent with a put-out look on her face and a roasted ear of corn in her hands. Her long hair was draped over her shoulder, along with a blue shawl no doubt meant to make her prosthetic arm less obvious. Her oversized purse held a projector-sized lump.  

Target acquired, Sombra fell back to the shadows of a small alley and waited until she felt that stomach-hooking sensation of Reaper’s presence to nod over to where the trio were making their way to a set of steps to sit down. She let out a whistle at the cut up the length of Satya’s flowery blue skirt.  _ “Mirala, bien piernuda.” _ [7]

_ “Ojos al frente, sin vergüenza,” _ said the shadow right behind her.[8]

_ “Ay, _ you’re no fun Gabi. Look,” she jutted her chin at the tallest in the group, “There’s your cowboy.”

Gabriel deflected, as was his custom. “Your architech is standing very close to that Shimada.”

Sombra laughed at the implication as she watched Satya offer Hanzo the other untouched side of her corn. They sat next to each other on the steps, sides pressed together and whispering conspiratorially to one another as McCree kept watch.

“My sources tell me that Shimada’s fucking your Joel.”

“Your sources, huh?”

“Yep.” She stepped back out of the alley, “What my sources  _ don’t _ say is where your little soldier boy is, so I suggest you get on that.”

He didn’t reply, at least not that she heard. It was a bit hard to hear anything over the sound of the band’s instruments, and their words as they sang.

_ “Era tan linda que alumbraba las estrellas, era tan buena que todo se me olvido así-” _ [9]

A quick glance around showed that the area was  _ probably _ clear of Muertos and most of their Talon members didn’t dare to venture out when their explicit orders were to stay hidden. But Sombra had her thermoptic camo to fall back on if things got hairy. She didn’t need to be here, not really. She could just as easily relay the plan the next day when Sombra passed on the information about the  _ Mision _ to her superiors and Overwatch showed up to intervene.

But Sombra was nothing if not curious.

She threw caution to the wind and started towards Symmetra and her entourage, confident in the fact that none of them knew what she looked like. Satya and Hanzo were too deep into their conversation to spot her approaching, but Sombra saw Jesse’s eyes widen a fraction and his lips curl into a smile as she barreled towards them. It was only when she stood a foot in front of them that the pair looked up, and Hanzo gave her a cold look with narrowed eyes. She grinned down at him, then turned to the architech and offered her hand.

_ “Hola linda. Bailas?” _ [10]

Sombra felt a buzz of victory when she didn’t see recognition flash in Satya’s golden eyes, but nevertheless, her face took on a hard, calculating look. Hanzo looked between the two of them, face blank. McCree just looked amused.  

“She’s askin’ if you wanna dance.” He translated to their right. Satya didn’t answer her. She simply slid her own right hand into Sombra’s waiting one and let herself be lifted off the steps. She left the purse.

Sombra gripped her hand a little tighter and pushed through the dancing crowd, politely chirping,  _ “Disculpa! Perdon!” _ as she went. Behind her, she could practically feel the cloud of  suspicion hanging over Satya’s head over the thump of the music in her chest. The rhythm was picking up, drums and woodwinds gathering in a swell that moved like the rush of a river. [11]

_ “Así, se fue esclareciendo así, me fui diluyendo así. Y ya nunca yo supe de mi-” _

She stopped in the dead center of the crowd, right by the fountain, but she still felt the archer’s eyes on them. No matter, they were too far to be overheard. Sombra tore her eyes from the pair of men they left behind and looked up to meet her dance partner’s wary gaze.

_ Pero Dios, _ she was prettier up close.[12] __

_ “No… hablo español.” _ Satya said hesitantly, the words obviously well mentally rehearsed.[13]

Sombra smiled and pulled her a step closer by their linked hands. She let the game drag on, and pulled Satya’s hand to settle on her waist. She nodded at the dancers around them, and quirked her head to the side. Satya eyed the moving feet around them, took her other hand, and began copying them the moment Sombra began to step in time with the music. Sombra’s grin widened when she saw for herself how the woman danced, giving credence to Vishkar’s pride in their graceful architech. Satya moved effortlessly, clinical eye catching onto the patterns in the movement of the dancers around them and applying them to herself skillfully. Poetry in motion, from the swish of her skirt to the heavy wave of her hair.

Sombra led, drawing circles in the air with their hands, then she pulled back and wound Satya into a twirl, let her go, and got pulled into one herself. She laughed, and made quick footwork to get back on her left, and brought her arm overhead to let Satya take another spin, then took both of her hands in hers and marveled at the synthetic grip on the pads of her left hand fingers.

Step forward, back, side; bodies pressed together then apart, hands clasped then not. She brought them back so they were face to face, and finally broke the silence.

“Question,” Sombra watched Satya take in the English with no more than a blink and the loss of her slow-to-form smile from the dance. She lifted her voice just over the music, “Were you going to accept a dance from anyone presenting as female just in case any of them were me?”

_ “Y aun sigue intacta mi locura por su amor, mi locura por su amor-” _

To her credit, Satya’s step only faltered for half a beat. “The purple isn’t subtle. I suspected as much.” Her eyes settled on her own. “But I wasn’t sure, until now. Hello Sombra.”

_ “Hola, chula.” _ Time to get down to business. “Don’t worry, I won’t take your entire night. Now-”

Satya made a thoughtful noise and interrupted. “What is this?”

Sombra blinked and nearly tripped when Satya moved to dance at her side. “I thought we established I’m blackmailing you.”

She missed the look her quip got her when Satya pulled their hands together then up, and forced them both into a twirl. When they were back to facing each other, Satya graced her with one of her unimpressed looks before parting her lips to elaborate. “I meant the music. This style of dance. It isn’t salsa. What is it?”

_ “El amor llega justo cuando no lo esperas-” _

“Uh…” Sombra faltered, mentally scrambling to remember. Satya’s hand moved from her shoulder back to her waist, “It’s uh… I think  _ cumbia _ ? Or  _ vallenato _ -o-o-oh?” Their heights suddenly evened out, and Sombra struggled to keep her balance when Satya dipped to hover over her thigh in a near-straddle. “What are you doing?”

Satya’s expression was smug. And haughty. “Dancing this as it seems to be meant to.”  

“Oh.” Sombra took a second to realize what she was doing. She wrapped her left arm around her shoulder and kept their other hands clasped to their side, then pulled them tighter together. The sway of both their hips almost intimate. “Stop trying to distract me, I’m trying to blackmail you here.”

“Yes, trying. Attempts do not guarantee success, and I’m beginning to see your character. You brought me here to speak. So speak.”  

_ “-entre risas y llanto, también hay peleas-” _

Gone was the cowering architech from their conversation in the dead of night. Perhaps it hadn’t been the brightest idea to try to intimidate Satya in her element. Because fuck, she was a good dancer. Sombra had the grace to mentally award her adversary a point when she called it quits in their battle of wills and took a step back to take on the simplest dance form, with only their opposing hands clasped in front of them.

_ “-no comprendo cómo sucedió, el destino solo nos junto-” _

Satya’s grin was insufferable.

_ Concentrate, Sombrita. _ [14]

_ “Ella es mi fiesta, mi aventura, mi brebaje cuando la vida me tiene desencantado-” _

No, Sombra wasn’t going to be beaten at the game she had chosen. They were both out of breath and glaring at each other as the song wound down to its end. Sombra’s lips ticked up at the corner, amused against her better judgement.

“Alright, Ms. Vaswani. If you’re going to be cowed, it won’t be on a dance floor. I get the message. Now let’s talk shop before Los Muertos decide to make an appearance and you’re whisked away to perform your civic duty: Tomorrow you’re to escort a truck carrying a fusion core to LumériCo’s final ziggurat. Has your employer let you in on all their secrets yet?”

Satya tripped over her feet when the band’s new song changed in pace entirely, and Sombra cursed when she realized she didn’t really know the steps to a merengue. McCree and Mercy rushed onto the dance floor, and Sombra moved them to the edge to avoid being overheard. Out of the crowd, Satya took her hand back and immediately crossed her arms over her chest.

“We toured the facility. I found nothing there to lead me to suspect my company has any current dealings with LumériCo.”

“Right, sure. Listen, at some point tomorrow I’m going to patch myself into your comm. I’ll give you a set of coordinates, you find a way to break away from your teammates tomorrow and meet me there,  _ comprende?” _

Satya took a minute to mull it over. Sombra entertained herself by watching the cowboy and angel’s dance get derailed by the Helix agent.

“What will you expect of me at the location?” Satya asked. She flipped her hair over her shoulder, and Sombra pulled a phone from her back pocket to show her a picture of one of the control hubs in the ziggurat.

“I want access to Vishkar’s contract with LumériCo, and you want the truth. You help me get past this, and we both get what we want.”

“I know the truth.” Satya shot back at her blandly as she took the phone offered to her. “What is this?”    

“A biometric scanner I can’t override. Vishkar tech, curiously enough. I checked with LumériCo and Vishkar’s networks to see which agents have clearance, and guess who wasn’t on the list but now miraculously will be if you choose to show up tomorrow? You, my friend! You can thank me later.”

“There is no conceivable outcome to this plan of yours that will end in me thanking you.” Satya shoved the phone back at her, and Sombra took it with good grace, but she wasn’t done. “At the end of it I will be just as sure as I am now in my company’s standing.”    

Sombra scoffed and pocketed the phone. “It’s not my fucking job to teach you where you’re wrong. I’m giving you the tools, you’re giving me the access, and LumériCo is going down, one way or another.” She looked up at the change of song. She liked this one. But the look of disdain Satya was shooting her kinda clued her in that she wouldn’t be up for another dance.

Satya also seemed to sense their meeting was coming to a close. “Would that be all?”

“Uh…” Sombra said, too preoccupied with a flash of neon from across the square. Squinting into the crowd, she found a pair of phosphorescent skulls glowing ominously in the darkness of an alcove hidden in shadows. What’s more, she spied Reaper’s smoke drifting down along a far wall, at odds with the smoke rising from the grills of the food stands. “Yep! That would be all!  _ Hasta mañana, linda. _ ”[15]

She turned to leave, not sparing the architech another glance. On her way to the Reaper, she spotted the archer walking towards her in the crowd. On his shoulder was Satya’s purse, and strapped to his back was the guitar case that held his weapon. His eyes were locked onto the woman she’d just left behind, but they flickered to her when their paths crossed. She cocked a brow and grinned at him.

_ “Q'hubo, papi chulo?” _ [16]

All she got was the same cold, disinterested look from before. So, Sombra winked at him and went on her merry way.

Reaper settled just out of sight to the side of a taco stand. Sombra leaned against its counter to try and hail one of the workers.

_ “Ya viste que por aquí andan los Muertos. Valio la pena el riesgo? Valio la pena ella?” _ [17]

Sombra paused in her waving and stiffened at Reaper’s tone. She let out a careful exhale and said, “She doesn’t mean anything to me, Gabriel. Get off my fucking dick.”

“If she doesn’t mean anything, then what is she?”

Sombra turned and spotted Agent Symmetra in the crowd almost immediately. She smiled as she watched Satya and the archer talk, and her smile widened when Hanzo’s eyes flicked to where she stood casually against the taco stand, but she fought down the urge to wave. Satya was apparently a terrible liar, and he was a smart boy.

“She’s a means to an end.”

“An end to what?”

“Quite a few things, Gabi. Try to keep up.”  

The cook finally took her order and she watched impatiently as he dipped the edges of a stack of tortillas in a tray of meat juice. On went the meat, then the fixings, and then she got handed two trays laden with food covered in aluminum foil.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” She asked pleasantly once her back was turned and smoke began curling around her calves.

She heard the Reaper give a huff of frustration.

“I’ll take that as a soft ‘no’, then. C’mon, I got food.” She meandered towards the edge of the plaza and gestured with the trays,  _ “De carne asada y adobada para mi, _ and you get your gross ass  _ tripas.” _ [18]

“You know I can’t taste anything.”

“Details. It’s warm, Gabi. I’ve got beer at home, you’ve got brooding to do, and I have a fusion core to find.”

The moon shone just as prettily off the water on their walk back up to Castillo.

* * *

 

Talon got the location to the fusion core the next morning. Given how quickly they wanted things to go the day before, Sombra wasn’t surprised she was deployed to plant a teleporter the minute she gave her report. What she  _ was _ surprised to discover was that Talon had called in their Muertos contacts and come to an agreement.

Los Muertos would provide manpower at the  _ Mision _ in exchange for weapons, and they didn’t care if Talon made off with the fusion core as long as they kept Overwatch from powering on the ziggurat.

When she brought the issue of her anonymity up, her handler simply told her not to get spotted.

Well, fuck.

To put it short, the fight wasn’t going well.

Sombra wasn’t a combatant, not really. She had her pistol and her camo, sure. But her main purpose was intel and sabotage. From a nondescript building overlooking the plaza, she used a voice distorter to give the tag team of Talon and Muertos a run-down on Overwatch’s position, but didn’t expect the Junkers on their team to crash a fucking truck into the  _ Mision. _ Then they hijacked the core’s truck right from under the Muertos’ noses.

She cursed under her breath when Overwatch did their job disgustingly well, taking almost no damage from the Muertos’ new weaponry even if their beams had decimated LumériCo’s security team. It helped that they had their angel with them, and that Agent Pharah had her winged back.

“I’m bringing the teleporter online.” She warned on the line as Overwatch and the core worked their way towards the plaza. “Be ready.”

“I will go through last.” Reaper answered after a chorus of unimportant voices.

“Right.” Sombra said, then turned to a holo screen she had open, ready to patch into Agent Symmetra’s private comm line. She pressed ‘connect’.

“Hey  _ linda. _ It’s me. Ready for the digits?” She asked once she was sure Satya could hear her.

“We are engaging who I suppose are your allies. Do you truly expect me to leave my team?” Agent Symmetra answered her after she had given her the coordinates. Sombra saw her run out of the side of a building, dressed in her battle gear and sticking out like a sore thumb.      

“Blackmail,  _ preciosa. _ Or do you prefer I drop my files on the noble truth-seeking media?”

Satya let out a sound of disgust, and Sombra grinned in triumph when she saw her wave the archer over to a landing leading up from the staircase to the left of the plaza. The cowboy soon joined them, and Sombra ducked out of sight from her window and remotely activated her translocator. She didn’t go through until she saw Satya abandon her teammates and run to the ziggurat on her own.

In retrospect, clipping the translocator beneath a table hadn’t been her brightest idea, she discovered when she landed face-first on the floor, hard. Groaning and poking at her tender nose, she rolled out from beneath the table then immediately brought out her machine pistol when a passing guard spotted her through the open doorway.

_ “Hay una intru-!” _ [19]

She shot them before they could finish their sentence, then activated her camo and crept along the walls to avoid the group of guards that ran past  

“Sombra, where are you? The teleporter’s down.” Their handler barked on the comm.

She ducked into a corner and deactivated her camo to pull up a screen. She checked the signatures of their agents and found the Reaper at the end of the list.  _ “Tranquilo, _ they all got through.” [20]

“Where are you?”

“Running interference!” She said as she climbed up a ladder, down a hallway, then into an empty stairwell to wait. In the safety of the room, she leaned against the wall and pulled up some holos to give herself access to LumériCo’s cameras to watch for the architech’s arrival at the main entrance.

Sombra connected to her comm again. “No, not that way. Go above the Bank of Dorado, there’s an emergency exit on the upper walkway.”

Satya simply answered her with huff, but took the path she outlined. The hacker made sure the door in question was open and waiting for the architech to come through.

“Once the  _ Mision _ got hit, they evacuated the workers. Security’s mostly on the lower floors,” Sombra explained as she guided her to her location, “Or hovering around the entries waiting for-” she paused when there was the sound of a blast from not too far off, “-for that. They won’t notice us until it’s too late for them.”

“I’m here.” She heard from her earpiece and coming from down the hall. Satya turned the corner, and Sombra waved at her cheerfully, then gestured to the control hub on the wall to her right. She left the stairwell and met her halfway.

“Alright, new friend of mine,” From the tips of her fingers, purple streaks shot ahead as she woke the screen in question. Its blue surface shimmered, and Sombra pulled up a screen of her own to make sure Agent Symmetra was added to Vishkar’s clearance list. “Right hand on the scanner, please.”

“No. Back away.” Suddenly, Sombra had Satya’s projector in her face. “If I am to do this, I will not risk you skewing the information before I can examine it. I have the access, and you need proximity to perform your hacks using that device on your head and hands. I will search out the information, and you will direct me from a distance.”

“What? No! There’s no time! Your fucking team is almost here, I can’t let them install that c-” She shut up with the projector’s petals opened and she belatedly thought to reach for her pistol. “Fine. I’ll stand on the platform over there.” She kept talking as she walked backwards, “Right hand on the scanner, then…”

She tried walking her through command prompts, but soon remembered the architech had been good enough to come damn near close to finding her using the cowboy’s confiscated phone, so she simply told her what to look for. The blasts from outside increased in volume, and the panicked yells of the guards, the Muertos, and their own Talon agents sounded almost right outside the ziggurat’s delivery area.  Meanwhile, Satya dug through files, and Sombra kept a close eye on them from where she had plopped down to sit on the floor in a half-crouch. Satya passed over some building schematics and Sombra perked up.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait! What was that?”

Satya swiped back a few files and stopped when Sombra squawked in alarm. When she shot forward, Satya warded her off with her projector. “That! What is it?”

The architech leveled her a warning glare and turned back to peer at the schematics. “It seems to be plans for a new city center in the Castillo district.”

“Built by LumériCo?”

Satya opened the file’s folder in search for more. “No, this is Vishkar Corp. It must be part of the broken contract, it’s dated…”

“Yeah?”   

“…The date has been redacted.” 

“I’m shocked.” Sombra deadpanned. Satya seemed too immersed in the files to glare. She minimized the window and went digging through others. She pulled up the contract that had supposedly gone up in smoke the year before, read through it, then pulled up records of fund transfers. Mexican pesos in the millions recently piled through the bank nextdoor from an account in-

“India.” Satya breathed.

“Color me surprised. Your people?” 

“It… no. The name attached to the account is not affiliated with us. Besides, the money isn’t moving, it’s just…” 

“Right, sure. If you let me take a look at it, I’m sure I’d be able to find exactly which of your execs is hiding behind the fake name.” That managed to get her a glare and another warning look. She looked at the time and decided it was time to rush things along.  _ “Mira, _ go back to the schematics of the city layout. Pull up a map of what your people have done to that  _ favela _ in Rio. I think you’ll find something in common.”  

Symmetra did just that. Side by side, the layouts weren’t identical, but the planning and design of them were unmistakable. “Yes, we were planning another compound. But, I repeat, we no longer hold a contract with LumériCo-”

“Your contract may have been ‘torn up’ and official communication ceased, but that money is sitting there for a reason, Agent Symmetra. How well is your little feudalistic labor compound doing in Brazil? Didn’t they stop building the people their new homes the second your brainwash failed and their resistance gained momentum? Some humanitarians you are.”

Satya bristled and responded quickly. “We do not  _ brainwash-” _

“Lúcio designed his weapons using your sound tech!” 

“What that criminal does has nothing to do with us! Furthermore, this compound was not to be like the one we built in Rio! This redevelopment was a two part project.” Satya was skimming over the plan proposals in the contract. “Dorado itself would remain much the same, aesthetically. The issue here is the water quality and the deterioration of the buildings around Castillo. The plan was to build a neighborhood out in the surrounding areas and offer those living spaces to the citizens while we fixed the quality of life here. Such a large-scale project would take years, and in the meantime, people would have more stable housing, cleaner water and energy, and work at the energy company.”

“Castillo is much better off than other areas of Dorado that would actually benefit from the help. Castillo is being targeted solely for the fact that Portero thinks it’s a stain upon the city, and he’s still running LumériCo behind the scenes! Why would people leave their jobs to work for LumériCo? And how is LumériCo going to convince everyone to abandon their homes? Dorado is steeped in history and tradition. What makes you think they’ll agree to leave?”

Satya looked at her as if she had just asked a particularly stupid question. “They will offer to buy their properties for a generous sum. It’s the natural course of action, why would they not take the offer? With that money, and a new residence secured, their quality of life will improve.”

“Wow, yeah, right, mhmm.” Sombra fought to keep her voice level. Outside, the shouting grew louder, closer. There was a commotion by the loading doors. “And what happens to Dorado after that?” 

“After the renovation, citizens will be free to repurchase their homes if they wish.” Satya paused, put down her projector, and flipped through more files. She added offhand, “They would be given preference, of course.”  

“Preference? They won’t be able to afford it! You do realize you’re describing gentrification, right?”  

Satya stiffened. She shook her head. “No. Vishkar Corp has no interest in profiting off the poor. We have no interest in bringing in the higher classes. Vishkar Corp’s mission is to elevate those in need to-”

But the loading doors burst open, fighting filled the ground below and Sombra stood to face off against the harried looking architech. “Did you give the Brazilians the same offer, then, before they said no and you decided to blow them up? After a catastrophe like that, there wasn’t much of value left to buy, huh? The people of Brazil didn’t get the fucking choice. Is that what you’re going to allow to happen here?” 

Gunfire, the rev of an engine, and the hollers of the smaller of the Junkers soon made it difficult to hear, so Sombra stepped closer. If anyone thought to look up, they’d be found. Thankfully Pharah still seemed to be outside. Sombra readied her camo while Symmetra blathered on. 

“Vishkar Corp’s mission is to provide order, to give aid that fits their-“

“Oh my god,  _ pendeja, _ do you even hear yourself?”[21]

“-fits their station, and serves the greater good! Without order,-“ 

“How aren’t you getting this? No, shut up!” She pointed at the keyboard behind Satya even if the sound of fighting below marked the timer on the clock was nearing its end for Sombra’s cause. “Check the construction of the ziggurats! All of them! Right now! The tippy tippy top. No, I don’t mean official architectural floor plans, I mean the cameras!” 

Satya glared, then she stared at the commotion below them. It was a miracle they hadn’t been spotted, really.

“Your teammates are almost at the fucking power core, hurry the fuck up!” 

With a look that told Sombra she had already made up her mind, Satya turned to the keyboard. She pulled up security feeds, saw her teammates fighting below, saw the chaos in the streets, and took it all in with pursed lips until she found what they were looking for. Mounted on the top of the pyramid, broadcast speakers emblazoned with Vishkar’s logo.

Satya took a small step back from the keyboard. “Vishkar sound technology.” 

Progress. “If your contract is null, why are those still up there? Look at the money again, Agent Symmetra! There’s no way that amount’s worth the value of the lower district, poor as it is. Your Vishkar Corporation is going to brainwash these people into complacency. Into giving up their homes so the rich can move in and take the beachfront property for themselves! That is your noble corporation’s end goal! Profit! These innocent people will lose their way of life to greed if you let your team continue to be ignorant to your employer’s plans!” 

“This… this can’t… We would have taken back our property at the termination of the deal. We-” Satya froze and brought a hand up to a button on her headpiece. Sombra took a hint and let herself into the Overwatch line.

“-you’ve found anything of issue, please report. We have taken the point, and will proceed on your recommendation.” Agent Mercy was saying.

Sombra made an annoyed sound when her own line started going haywire, but she ignored it.

Satya stared at the plans. Both Ziegler and McCree prompted her for an answer, a response. Her eyes didn’t shift from the screen.

_ “Y ahora qué harás?” _ [22]

Satya looked up at the sound of her voice. Her eyes lingered on the security feed. She let out a shaky breath and pressed a hand to her ear.

“This is Agent Symmetra.” Sombra heard from a few feet away and from the comm in her own ear. “I am currently located in the main hub of the ziggurat and tapped into their security network. Everything…” Sombra saw her back straighten, saw her eyes lift to lock onto hers. She went on resolutely in her authoritative tone. “Everything is as it should be. There is nothing to report.”

“Alright.” Came McCree’s response on the line. “You heard her, let’s finish the job. Mercy, I want you off the objective. Stay back in case we’ve got any others incoming. Pharah, you stand guard out there, but be careful. Hanzo? You up th-?”

Sombra yanked the earpiece out.     

So the architech had wasted her chance at redemption.

“Puppet.” Sombra didn’t even try to tone back the disgust in her snarl. At that word, Satya stiffened. Sombra pulled out her pistol and trained it on Overwatch’s traitor for good measure. It was too late to join in the fight, she wouldn’t be able to make a damn difference. Her last shot would be to buy her own team time. She really had been counting on the architech being a damn decent person. Once the core connected, there would be no way of stopping the ziggurats from forming their connection around Dorado. What she could do was fudge their directions and keep them from connecting to their satellite. Reaper’s suggestion of simply blowing the place up was becoming more and more realistic by the second. 

Sombra shoved Satya to the side to access the control panel. Satya let herself be pushed, body as lifeless as a ragdoll. Sombra multitasked and shoved her comm back in her ear.  _ “Oye Gabi, te acuerdas de tu primer plan? Creo que va ser necesario.” _ She chirped pseudo-cheerfully.[23]

She got nothing in reply. “Gabi? Hello? Reaper, come in!”  

Nothing. Ah well, judging by the trail of their dead men below, Reaper would no doubt come to the same conclusion. To get a better idea of her timeframe, she gave herself access to Overwatch’s line again. She shot a glance at the architech when she checked to make sure her aim was still true. It was hard to type one-handed, but fuck, was spite a good motivator. 

“You fucking puppet. I don’t know whether to call you a spineless coward or a brainless drone, Satya Vaswani! Do you even deserve a name? Is Vishkar all you actually are? Do you even remember where you came from? Hyderabad, right?” Sombra got a shot of vindictive pleasure when that startled a reaction out of the other woman. She settled her attention on the screen before her and resumed her fervent typing. “Yeah, I read up on you a bit more. ‘Saved’ from the streets by a Vishkar talent scout when you were a kid. Taken, more like.”

“No.”

“Did you parents know? Did you see them again? Do you even speak your language?” Her fingers stalled on the keyboard and she turned to look at Satya over her raised arm and the barrel of her gun. “Was there any room for Urdu, or Hindi, or whatever you spoke before at the Academy, or was that as beaten out of you as your humanity? What of Satya Vaswani is left other than her dance? They took you, they took your home, your language, your culture. What else did they take, Vaswani? Your soul? Your-?”

Sombra always saw too much. In her line of work, it was an advantage. So she didn’t miss the way Satya stiffened in her onslaught, lips pursed together, shoulders drawn in, holding her body tight as a spring. Around them were shouts of victory from Overwatch’s agents and the signs of the ziggurat coming to life. But Sombra didn’t miss the way Satya’s right hand went to clutch at her left arm, fingers clinging onto the white prosthetic.

Sombra felt the breath rush out of her lungs. Her hands fell from the keyboard. 

“Your… Your arm. They took your fucking arm?”

“It was an accident.” Still, Symmetra rushed to defend her employer even as Sombra saw visceral horror growing in her eyes. “A… it was… It was a mistake. I made a mistake, I…” 

Sombra felt more than saw the architech make up her mind once more. She turned to face her completely, and Satya stopped hugging herself. She drew her shoulders back and stared at the screen in front of them once more. 

“I made a mistake.”

“Are we… Are we still talking about your arm? Because that’s seriously fucked up.” 

Satya ignored her. “I do not know enough to condemn my entire company. But I do know that what happened in Rio must not happen here.”

_ “Chula, _ it’s too fucking late! They’ve already installed the core! You fucked the fuck up is what you did! Your little mistake is going to cost people their lives if I don’t-” She cut herself off at the grave expression on the other woman’s face

“I made a mistake.” She repeated. Remorse. Huh. That was a new one coming from her regal voice. 

But Sombra wasn’t done being mad. She went on indignantly, “Yeah. Yeah, you really did.”

But Satya wasn’t looking for pity. “I will correct my mistake.”

She pushed Sombra away from the controls and set her own blue-tipped fingernails on the panel. “The core will take some time to adjust. If we reposition the satellite at the right moment, we can interrupt their signal and give my teammates enough time to destroy the ziggurat. We must begin an evacuation of those left in the surrounding area.”

She stopped directing words at her, and instead put a finger to her headset. 

“Hanzo.” Satya’s voice was thin, full of trepidation. “Agent Hanzo, come in.”

“Satya? I'm nearly to your location. We’ve made our final approach.” Hanzo’s voice sounded directly in her ear, but Sombra thought she heard an echo of it. She frowned and turned in place, scanning the area below for the archer.  

“I- I made a-a… I… I made… a mistake.”  

“Once the ziggurats go online, we will be able to retreat. We only have a few enemies left. Is that you by the-” Hanzo cut himself off, and Sombra thought to look up. Silhouetted against the bright light shining through the glass face of the pyramid, perched on an impossibly thin ledge. The Shimada.  

Sombra had an out-of-body experience when she realized what the situation looked like to the sharp-eyed archer. Satya, with her back turned and entire body exposed at the top of the terminal. And Sombra, with a gun still aimed at her, a goddamned purple glowstick that screamed ‘Talon!’.

“Satya!” She heard him shout a warning, saw the back of Symmetra’s head lift to see what was the fuss. She turned her head to glance at her over her shoulder, then up to follow Sombra’s gaze to where the archer’s tattooed arm was pulling back to draw his bowstring.

She lifted her arm to warn him off, “Hanzo! No-!”

The arrow flew.

Honestly, Sombra had seen the man shoot before. She had seen him in action in Siberia, watched him here in Dorado from afar as he took down Muerto after Muerto. She knew to expect the arrowhead to lodge itself in her forehead, to take her out in a quick, blessedly painless, second.

But despite what her mind was comforting her with, she registered pain. She doubled over and screamed when the muscles in her stomach convulsed at the movement. She looked down to see synthetic fletching at the tip of an arrow shaft, the ends of its metallic head just barely visible from where it pierced her gut. The pistol clattered onto the floor. Then she fell.

So, she wouldn’t be afforded a quick death. Slow and painful it was.  

Gasping in pain, mouth spewing curses and eyes watering, she saw Satya look at her curled on the floor. Saw her lips purse, expression harden, and her back turn. 

If her stomach weren’t already busy being ablaze with pain, it would have dropped. Sombra coughed out blood.

What did she expect? For the architech to stop and help her? Abandon the people of Dorado to Vishkar’s plot? Selfishly, yes. That’s exactly what Sombra wanted if it meant she got to live.

She had to live. She had so much left to do. 

Fuck, no one knew where she was. No chance of Gabriel showing up with a death flower to save her ass. Her Talon team was mostly dead, the Muertos didn’t know she was here. 

She was going to die alone, and the damned architech was still typing away, indifferent to the woman dying at her feet.  

What did she expect? They weren’t friends. 

Friends helped friends, and they weren’t friends. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If… anyone’s curious as to why I took so long to update, here’s the reason: I tried making a playlist for symbra to get in the Writing Mood™ and it was too lit. I got too distracted every time i put it on. I was literally too busy dancing. I can’t even dance but did that stop me? No. I basically channeled Genji’s lame-ass dance skills for three fockin months. Who knew Panjabi MC and Daddy Yankee would make such an unproductive musical cocktail? Are you happy now, Snow White? Are you satisfied?
> 
> Translations: 
> 
> [1]Turning off the lights  
> [2]The shrimp that falls asleep… (you snooze you lose)  
> [3]What’re you doing?  
> [4]Getting ready, asshole!  
> [5]Blabbermouth/ gossip  
> [6]Do whatever you want, Gabrielito.  
> [7]Look at her, she… *piernuda would translate to thicc, wouldn’t it?* She thicc  
> [8]Eyes up front, you *shameless person*  
> [9]*I’m translating the entirety of the song here:*  
> She was so lovely she lit the stars, she was so good that I forgot everything like this- Like this, everything cleared away like this, I started diluting like this, and then I never knew what happened to me- and my madness for her love remains intact, my madness for her love- Love arrives exactly when you least expect it- among laughter and tears, there can be fights too- I don’t know how it happened, destiny simply brought us together- She’s my party, my adventure, my elixir when life’s got me disenchanted-  
> [10]Hey beautiful. Wanna dance?  
> [11]Excuse me! Pardon me!  
> [12]But God,  
> [13]I don’t… speak Spanish.  
> [14]Concentrate, Sombrita. *I JUST REALIZED IT READS EXACTLY THE SAME MEANING IN ENGLISH LOL*  
> [15]See you tomorrow, lovely.  
> [16]’Sup hot stuff?  
> [17]You know Los Muertos are around here. Was this worth the risk? Was she worth the risk?  
> [18]I’ve got carne asada and adobada for me, and you get your gross ass intestines.  
> [19]There’s an intruder!  
> [20]Calm down, they all got through.  
> [21]dumbass  
> [22]What will you do now?  
> [23]Hey Gabi, you remember your first plan? I think we’re gonna need it.  
>   
> Song referenced: Ella es mi fiesta remix by Carlos Vives and Maluma
> 
> hmu on tumblr [here](https://cantodelcolibri.tumblr.com) if u wanna ever like, yell me into productiveness 
> 
> Thx for reading!


	4. Un error convertido en acierto

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate titles- “Sombra Says ‘Fuck’ A Lot” OR “Too Many Conversations And Awkward Breaks, The Chapter”
> 
> Translations in the end notes

The archer had delicate ankles. 

Sombra had a pretty damn good view of them from her vantage point on the floor where she was bleeding out. Well, not really bleeding out. There wasn’t as much blood as she expected there to be. As far as bleeding went, she bled worse once a month. This was nothing, just a light stab wound by an arrowhead launched at some few hundred feet per second and she was going to die, nobody knew where she was, she was leaving so many loose ends and open doors for assholes that didn’t deserve it and this wasn’t happening, it wasn’t happening, it wasn’t-

Anyway, back to the ankles. 

They were downright dainty. 

“What are you doing?” She heard Hanzo ask the architech still typing away at the terminal. “What mistake? Who is she?” Then he stepped closer to Sombra and kicked her pistol off the ledge, because it was  _ such _ a threat and  _ completely _ within Sombra’s reach and she was  _ totally _ preoccupied with shooting the archer in the gut for revenge. 

Actually, that last part was true. 

“She is Sombra.” Satya answered him. 

_ “Que onda?” _ Sombra hissed out, but the words may have been lost in both her whimpers and the way the archer flared at the response.[1]

“You found her.” Hanzo said. He bristled and gestured at her prone figure on the ground. “You knew it was her yesterday, and you did not report her to McCree, even knowing that finding her was the purpose of this mission!”

Satya’s hands didn’t even pause over the keys. Sombra could see she was redirecting the signal. It was going to work. “I will explain everything later Hanzo, but first-!”

“You will explain everything now!” He yelled and yanked Satya back from the keyboard, cutting her from her work.

They stood there, glaring and sizing each other up. Meanwhile, Dorado was in danger, Sombra was bleeding out on top of being ignored and she wasn’t having that. 

_ “Par de pendejos, se pueden apurar?” _ she yelled and then immediately regretted it for the strain it put on her stomach. “Fuck!” Satya jumped a bit, as if she just remembered Sombra was still there.[2]

“I lied.” She told Hanzo, “Under threat of blackmail, I came here on her orders because she swore she could prove Vishkar’s guilt in all allegations against us. The Soldier reported the truth.  LumériCo does not have the citizens’ best interests in mind and they have struck a deal with Vishkar to use our sound tech to build a situation similar to that of Rio.” Then she shoved him off and went back to typing. She pulled up multiple security feeds from the tops of the ziggurats’ reception towers. Mounted on them were speakers stamped with Vishkar’s blue logo. Hanzo’s expression clouded with a different kind of anger.   
  
“I chose not to warn the team. I lied to protect my company. I made a mistake.” Softer, she pleaded with him, “And I will fix it. Please understand.”   
  
The archer looked conflicted, but he didn’t have the looks of someone about to turn to violence.   
  
“Hanzo, please.”   
  
He took a moment, but in the end he exhaled and quietly asked, “What do you need of me?”   
  
“I can take care of stalling the connection. After, we must find a way to uninstall or destroy that fusion core. For now, take Sombra to Agent Mercy. Her wound must be seen to.”   
  
_ “Que!?” _ The hacker in question screeched. She glared as a new and entirely different fear settled around the hole in her gut. “No! No no no no no, I have seen what that doctor does, and I’d rather die, thank you!”[3]   
  
“Mercy’s nanomolecular technology feels cold, but nothing more. There is nothing to fear.” Satya told her dismissively.   
  
Sombra laughed, but stopped when she coughed out more blood. “No. There’s no way I’m going to end up like Reaper. Take me back to Castillo, I’ve got a biotic emitter.”

Satya paused, considering. “I have a teleporter set up. We can-”

“No!” Hanzo cut them both off. “She is the mission, and we have her under custody! Satya, we must report this!”

“If you let them arrest me, consider our ‘friendship’ over, Vaswani.” Sombra threatened, and Hanzo clicked his tongue. He reached for the comm at his ear but froze when Satya lifted her projector and aimed it at his chest.

Oh. Huh. Maybe she did give a fuck after all. “Hanzo. I owe her. I need her.”

“Satya, put it down.”

“I cannot let you take her. I’ve stalled them. It’ll take the system fifteen minutes to reset. Warn the team, evacuate. I’ll trust you to see that the core is destroyed. Trust me to return.” She knelt next to Sombra, her photon projector still aimed at him. “I will return and I will take responsibility, I swear it.”

Hanzo stared, and Sombra honestly wouldn’t be able to call his bluff if he were bluffing. He looked both parts ready to kill them and ready to step aside. Agent Symmetra was good, but this asshole was a top-knotch assassin. 

“You threatened me, and what I am about to say was never said,” He warned her, and Sombra waited for the other pin to drop. “You have until sundown.” 

Sombra blinked. Satya didn’t relax. Her hand tightened on the handle of her projector. “Or?” 

“Or you will have betrayed mine and Overwatch’s trust twice and I will consider you a traitor.” He said plainly. “Do not make me regret trusting you, Satya, because you will surely regret it if I do.” 

Satya’s shoulders fell, and she relaxed. “I understand. Thank you.”

Hanzo helped her lift Sombra off the ground so that she could construct a gurney out of hard light. Stuck being carried his beefy arms like some sort of princess bride, Sombra tried for a conversational tone, or about as much of one as she could manage with her voice straining in pain.

“So, you’re the dragon guy, right?” She wheezed semi-casually. “Cool, cool. So are they- or you, like sharks? Are the dragons a euphemism? Do you have two dic-?”

Hanzo dropped her.

She fell on the completed gurney, but it still hurt like a bitch. 

“Ow, you bitch!” she yelped and clutched at her head where it banged against the gurney. Fuck, it fucking hurt. 

Neither of the two above her seemed to care about her outburst. Or her, y’know, dying. Satya took her position at the end of the gurney, and Sombra wondered how exactly the fuck they were going to make it all the way to Castillo in what by all accounts was a battlezone. Nevermind that her vision was seriously fuzzed at the edges. 

Oh. Oh, she was blacking out. Oh great. Must’ve hit her head harder than she initially thought.   

“My teleporter is around the corner. Twelve minutes now, Hanzo. I must go.” Even Satya’s voice was getting fuzzy.

“Till the sun sets, Satya.” So was Hanzo’s. 

Hanzo. Right. The bastard at fault for her current leave of consciousness. She took a deep breath as the world rushed around her and Satya ran them both around the corner of the upper level of the ziggurat because fuck, if she was going to die she was at least going to be petty about it.

“Say hi to your brother for me,  _ chulo!” _ She yelled out and willfully ignored the pain that it got her. “We should all go to Russia again sometime!”

The world disappeared around her and for a second Sombra thought Hanzo had somehow managed to kill her for good, but then they reappeared in a small alcove over the plaza. There were screams for help, orders being shouted, and the wail of emergency response sirens blaring through the air. Sombra turned onto her side and ignored Satya’s warnings that she was going to worsen her condition. She pulled up a map from her fingertips and pushed it towards Satya.  

“Heyyyy, Sym? Symsym? Symmetra. Hey. I’ve got a present for you.” She managed to wheeze. 

“What is this?” 

Risky, stupid, but what choice did she have? 

“Coordinates.” She said. Then she passed the fuck out. 

* * *

 

It smelled like the bitter tang of freshly welded metal.

The scent was going to stick to her floorboards and curtains. It was already in her sheets. She was going to have to rebuild the cleaning bot she dismantled for parts because fuck if she had the energy to clean again. That telltale ache in her stomach made her take a mental note to go buy ice cream from the corner shop. 

Fuck. The wire on her bra was digging into her ribs. Why the fuck had she gone to bed with it on?

Now she could hear the faint irritating screech of the power tool. Damn it. She had told  _ el señor Roberto _ thousands of times that welding inside of the building was going to end in a fiery headache.  _ Pinche viejito terco _ with his omnic pet projects was going to get them all thrown out by the landlady. [4]

She stifled a groan and dug her elbows into the mattress to lift her face and torso and froze. 

She looked down. 

Wrong kind of gut pain. Wrong sort of blood.

She looked up. 

Satya Vaswani sat on a hard light stool at her bedside, a familiar toy propped on her thighs, and her headset and comms on a matching table beside her.  

Right. She was going to have to find a new hideout. 

“You have a soft toy.” The architech told her, as if this was just as much news to Sombra as it was to her. Sombra glared and then subtly inspected the room around her to see what snooping she had done while she was out. 

“Soft toy? It’s called a teddy bear, jeez.” Sombra snatched the toy from her and then gingerly raised herself further to check how badly she had stained her sheets. Okay, not too bad, nothing some hydrogen peroxide wouldn’t fix. On the floor next to her she spotted her pulsing biotic emitter and her clothes folded in a neat stack besides it. Nice of the architech to go out of her way to find the emitter, since even Sombra didn’t know exactly where she’d last shoved it. The bathroom? Probably. 

Symmetra was even nice enough to remove the arrow. Sombra spotted the fletching poking out from behind a small hard light bowl filled with stained gauze and a pair of her own scissors next to the architech’s gear. Symmetra wasn’t nice enough to bandage her, though. And the emitter wasn’t nice enough to repair the damage to her insides, only dull the pain and close the wound superficially. Kinda. 

Sombra tugged and readjusted her bra so that it no longer felt like her lungs were being punctured. She couldn’t help but notice the architech’s eyes on her chest as she did so. 

“Second date and you’ve already got me out of my clothes. You move fast,  _ preciosa.” _

Symmetra chose to ignore her comment. She moved her gaze back onto the toy in Sombra’s hands. “That is the only personal effect in your quarters. I wouldn’t have taken you for sentimental.”

Sombra harrumphed and looked around the room again, this time pointedly. Despite the architech’s words, there really was no sign that she had gone through her things. No alarms were pinging other than the intruder alert on her enhancements, so she was either very good, or she didn’t look through anything at all.

The emitter on the floor proved it obviously wasn’t the latter. 

“So you didn’t take me for sentimental. Well I didn’t take you for nosy.” Sombra swung her blanket all the way off and was relieved to see she still had her leggings on at least. She put her feet down onto the floor and doubled over clutching her stomach. Satya scoffed at her accusing tone. 

“You are an enemy, and you gave me access to your homebase. I would be a fool not to take advantage and learn what I could, given all our previous interactions were forced by your blackmail.”

“Aww, enemy? I thought we were past that,  _ chula. _ Here I am, alive and free and everything, all thanks to you!” 

“You’re still of use to me.” Her answer was cold, but Sombra still laughed at her bluntness. 

Then she cut to the chase. “What happened at the pyramid?” Sombra asked.

“There was an explosion there a few minutes after our departure. It is safe to assume Agent Hanzo carried my message to the rest of the Overwatch team and they destroyed the core before it could activate LumériCo’s grid. I know nothing else.”

So where was Reaper? Their comms were dead. What did their decimated team fall back on when Overwatch ruined their plans? Did they evacuate and leave her? No, Talon didn’t pull them from Dorado, because Reaper wouldn’t leave without her. He knew about this hideout, but he hadn’t come by, or else the architech would be dead. 

Well, maybe she was dead. Vishkar would hunt her down if they took her involvement as defection. Sombra looked at Agent Symmetra and her prim posture. She was Vishkar’s best. She was too useful to let die, and Sombra knew Vishkar hadn’t gotten as far as Talon had repurposing their tech to create another Widowmaker. So Vishkar had very limited options.

Symmetra had to know she had to tread carefully. 

Sombra stood up and winced, bringing an arm to wrap around her middle. She limped over to her rig and sat on her wheeled chair to pull up the news on one of her screens, but had to let out a string of curses as the movement jostled her wound. Satya didn’t seem to pity her plight, nor did she twist in her seat to keep Sombra in her line of sight. She didn’t even look up from where she was crafting prisms with her prosthetic hand. 

“Bullshit. You have to know more.” Sombra said. “You changed that satellite’s positioning using your own login. They’ll know you were involved, and don’t try to tell me they haven’t called you yet.”  

“The probability that they’ve attempted such is high.” said Satya, and then she gestured at the table next to her. “I have deactivated all trackers on my person and shut down communication devices. Both Vishkar’s and Overwatch’s.” Then her voice faltered, unsure. “If there is any truth to what you said- if… If our technology is being used to condition and not just soothe…”

Sombra quirked an unimpressed eyebrow and got past her own security to pull up local news reports. “Finally figured they could be using it on you too, huh?” 

“No. No, that is not what I fear.” 

Sombra laughed callously. She clicked on a promising link and pulled up footage from traffic cams around the city. 

“Right, no, that would absolve you of any guilt, wouldn’t it?” She mocked. “You’re afraid that they didn’t need to use their brainwashing to pull your strings-”

Satya stiffened and clenched her fist, banishing her hard light decahedron from existence. “It is  _ not _ brainwashing.” 

“You’re getting hung up on the wrong thing here,  _ linda.” _

Symmetra switched tactics suddenly. “That’s enough. You have been unconscious for three hours. The sunset is in another two. Either prove to me you will make good on your word to help me or I will take my leave and stop wasting my time.”

“Help you? My job here’s fucking done, Symsym. What makes you think I give a damn about what happens to you?” Sombra twirled in her chair, just to show how little she cared for the conversation. 

Agent Symmetra stood abruptly and walked off, but she didn’t go far. She walked briskly past Sombra’s table and kitchenette to stand with her hip pressed against the windowsill, looking down at the bustle of the streets below. Sombra smirked at her dramatics and pulled herself back towards her desk, grimacing at the lingering pain in her stomach. According to similar reports, Overwatch was currently aiding in relief efforts around Dorado. There were pictures of the blonde angel mending broken bones, and the Helix woman doing damage control around a bombed building. Apparently one of their Talon hidey-holes got found by the archer that shot her and the local authorities, and the cowboy and his troupe of police officers blasted closed an old tunnel.  

“I am not naive.” Satya proclaimed loudly, startling Sombra just a bit. Sombra paused in her typing to turn and watch her closely. Satya’s face was half cast in the shadow of her dimly lit apartment, and half glowing with the light of the afternoon sun outside. 

“I do not fear being used by them. I am an architech. A tool. My design is to be used, and I was designed to be a tool for change. But I fear the change I’ve had a hand in bringing upon the world has only benefitted the unworthy. My own pride is of no consequence here.” 

She was saying a lot, and yeah, Sombra was listening. But she was more entranced by the haughty tilt of Symmetra’s jaw, the rigidness of her stature. She may as well have been a statue, carved from stone, immovable. Resolute as the words cascading past her shapely lips.  

“I am not naive.” She repeated, and pinned Sombra with a look that made her question, just for a second, exactly who had the upper hand here. “I know you have no personal stake in this. I also know Talon must have struck a deal with Los Muertos to deal with us in exchange for the core. It is the only conclusion that explains their interference. But back there, you made no moves towards helping your men obtain their goal. You wanted it destroyed.”

“Orders were to take it, but Talon knew it’d be better blown up than with you.” Sombra said in a weak attempt to misguide her, but Satya again went on indifferently. Annoying habit.  

“No. I know a tool when I see one, and you are far from one. You contacted me outside orders. You went alone without any backup, else you would not have had to rely on me, an enemy, to save your life. You risked yourself to take down LumériCo. So, personal stake or no, you cared enough to act. Which means you care enough to help me.”

Sombra choked out a disbelieving laugh. Satya’s expression didn’t change. She simply continued staring her down from across the room, backlit in golden sunlight like some sort of deity. Sombra pushed aside ridiculous thoughts of  _ Guadalupanas _ and holy omens. She leaned forward in her chair and propped her elbows on her knees. 

“Aww, Agent Symmetra! Sounds to me like you’re rethinking my offer at friendship!” She clutched at her heart just to be annoying, and got an irritated eye twitch as a reward for her antics.

“Would your friendship entitle me to the files you blackmailed me with?” Symmetra asked. 

Sombra grinned. 

“Yeah, I guess.” She waited until she saw Satya’s shoulders relax slightly in relief to add, “Although, just a helpful suggestion: a kiss might get you  _ so _ much more.” 

She tried not to pout at the disgusted little twist Satya’s lips gave at the suggestion.    

* * *

 

Agent Symmetra only stayed long enough to interrogate her after what she had done to the cyborg in Siberia. For the sake of the archer, no doubt.

She had to resort to applying pressure to Sombra’s wound to get her to squeak, but ultimately, Sombra didn’t much care about keeping that particular mission a secret. 

“Oh. Yeah, that.” She tried sounding unaffected, but the wind knocked out of her made it more of a wheeze. “Talon wanted me to infect him with our God Program to see if cyborgs were susceptible. See, we’ve got this hothead up top that fought the little green guy long ago. Liked him a lot. Wants to make more. But he likes to make sure that everything goes according to plan, and having a weakness like that is no-go.” 

At Symmetra’s horrified and increasingly angry look, Sombra hastened to add, “Don’t worry! I didn’t actually install it! I just gave him a virus to slow him down and make it look like I did. He should be fine by now!”

“Explain.” Satya ordered, and Sombra didn’t see why not, so she did. 

With that last order of business squared away, and the sun threatening to dip below the horizon, Satya left. Sombra didn’t bother to send her off with anything other than a flashdrive with her Vishkar files and a vague promise to get in touch soon. 

Then she was alone.

Biotic emitters were great. They felt warm, healed you up, left you a bit lightheaded and sleepy. The downside to them was that they worked slowly and prioritized keeping you alive to fixing you up properly. Sombra huffed in irritation when an hour after Satya’s departure showed no great improvements. She should’ve known better than to pilfer an emitter from Gabriel, the guy was hardly ever human enough to require healing, and old enough to ensure that all his tech was outdated by five years at the very least. 

She lounged in her desk chair and did some busywork to avoid moving too much, giving the damn gizmo time to work. The purples and pinks of the sky outside muted to an inky black, clouds too thick to let the stars shine through. Her stomach grumbled, and for the first time since getting shot Sombra wondered how the fuck she was supposed to eat. God, she was even getting queasy. Her stomach swooped with dread.  

The wheels on her chair clattered over the grooves on her flooring when she shoved herself, chair and all, towards her kitchenette. Maybe a quesadilla wouldn’t be too much. Or just some tortillas slathered in salsa. 

She made it halfway before a shadow erupted from the floor just beneath her and sent her sprawling to the floor. Sombra got the wind knocked out of her via the wound to her gut for the second time that day, this time not by a shiny white prosthetic arm, but by the padded back of her swirly chair. 

Several moments of hacking and coughing in pain later, she frowned up at the mass of black standing in front of her bed. 

_ “Oye Gabi, vete a la verga y ahorrame el esfuerzo de llevarte yo misma, quieres?” _ [5]

“What happened to you?” The Reaper asked her. He looked terrible, form fuzzing around the edges like corrupted pixel art, twitchy and see-through in parts. 

She shoved the chair off of her and sat up to point at him in accusation. “Where the fuck were you? The fucker fucking your Joel fucking shot me!” 

The Reaper’s form gave an involuntary but very telling shudder at the mention of the cowboy’s not-name. Sombra was immediately on alert. 

“You saw him. The cowboy.” She said. Encouraged by a lack of reaction from the Reaper, she went on. “And he’s not here. So he turned down your offer, huh?”  

Reaper’s mask was trained on the little hard light table Sombra had nearly knocked over in her tumble. 

“You brought her here?” He pointed a clawed hand at the hard light constructions. Changing the subject, and denying her an answer. Shit, it was worse than she thought. She stood and reached up to pull his arm down. She stepped closer, probably too close. 

“You ran into your soldier too, didn’t you?” 

Reaper didn’t answer. Sombra clicked her tongue after she hissed in pain.

“Shit, Gabi. I’m sorry. I should’ve been there.” 

“You had a job. You did it. You were where you were supposed to be.” Gabriel finally spoke.

“But where’s Sombra when you need her, huh?” She pitched her voice low and made it gravelly to copy his own. If he weren’t wearing that stupid mask, she liked to think he would be smiling. With a sigh, she swooped down and picked up her undershirt from the folded pile by her bed and gingerly pulled it on over her wound. Then she ducked into her closet to pull out a pair of sweats and a canvas bag to put them in.  

_ “Andale, Gabi. Vamonos.” _ She led the way towards her door and grabbed a hoodie off the hook and shoved that in the bag too.[6]

_ “A donde?” _ [7]

“To get you some grub that’ll actually nourish you.” 

* * *

 

Dorado had one hospital. 

It also had a lot of clinics, but no one died in a clinic. Well. Not enough people died in clinics to justify going to one. 

And thanks to the combined efforts of Talon, Los Muertos, and Overwatch, there were plenty of people dying  _ en el Hospital Civil de Dorado. _ [8]

Sombra let the Reaper carry her through back alleys, hiding in the shadowy night from people still wandering the battle torn streets. It was a testament to how worn out the Reaper was that he had to put her down when they had a quarter of the way left, lest she risk phasing through his arms and onto the cobblestones. She prefered walking to a broken tailbone.

She wandered back onto the main streets, but stayed close enough to the shadows to keep an eye on her walking partner and to engage him in conversation.

_ “Entonces este mal humor a que se debe?” _ she asked. _ “Que te echó en cara ese malagradecido?” _

Gabriel laughed humorlessly at that.  _ “Aparte de la oferta?” _

_ “Si.” _ [9]

Poking the bear was never a good idea, but Sombra knew Gabriel. She knew she wouldn’t be able to get his mind off of his encounters of the day, so she tried to start a conversation over the lesser of the two and bury the Soldier back down where he belonged. 

“He told me I’d have to drag him into this kicking and screaming, just like last time.” 

“Asshole.” Sombra said, and Gabriel made an odd little noise. 

“Wasn’t it you telling me that he’d never say yes?” 

Sombra had to laugh at that. “True.” She said.  _ “Pero fuiste tu el que me contó todos esos cuentos de el. _ His hero complex, the  _ cowboy _ complex, the works. It hardly takes a genius to know he’d never leave Overwatch for Talon. Not even for you,  _ jefe.” _ [10]

Reaper shrugged, and the gesture was entirely Gabriel. “Worth a shot.” 

The streets changed from mismatched cobble to brick, then to smooth pavement. Homes became storefronts that were closed down for the night, and thunder rumbled ominously in the distance. A storm was rolling in, and Sombra hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella. 

Rising only a few stories over the apartment complexes and office buildings surrounding it, the hospital came into view as they turned into one of the main streets in the center of town. 

Sombra hummed, and she crossed her arms and rubbed her arms as a breeze blew past. Voice trying for casual, she said, “So now that you know for sure that he won’t help you, what will you do? We wanted the matched set and he was kind of important.” 

Reaper didn’t take the bait. He remained silent. Sombra kept trying.

“He’s dangerous, Gabriel. He knows how you think. Now that he knows who you are he’ll be able to counter us better than even your soldier or the Shrike have been able to.” 

“Why are you so interested in him?” He asked, irritable as always, stopping her before they reached the entrance to the hospital. 

Sombra considered trusting him with the truth. That she knew Gabriel was hurting, had been hurting since forever. That he had moments she’d begun labeling as ‘lucid’ when he seemed to become overwhelmed by the reality of what he was. But then he would fade back into the seething rage she was more comfortable seeing in him, full of bitterness and betrayal. 

There were also moments when he looked at her, something far away in his gaze. Moments when he accidentally called her ‘Jesse’. Sometimes ‘Jessito’, or ‘mijo’. 

She took Talon’s thinly veiled threat of an offer and let them take her in. She knew they knew her supposed ‘weakness’. Sombra snorted at the architech pinpointing it earlier that same day.  _ Sentimentality. _

“I’m not interested in him.” she answered. Gabriel gave her a look past the owl mask, and she raised both her hands.  _ “No me mires asi, _ it’s true.”[11]

He kept looking at her. 

“Look,” She said, and she moved forward to throw open the double doors of the civilian entrance to the emergency room. “I’ve got the remains of a hole in my gut that I’d like to get checked out, and there’s plenty of people with actual problems in this emergency room that got here before me. So go. Take your time. Reap some souls and put someone out of their misery. I’ve got your clothes here in my bag, just ping me on the comm.” 

Reaper finally pried his soulless eyes from her and fell back into smoke when she stepped into the waiting room and up to the help desk. She saw his shadow slither under chairs and into the hospital proper and heaved a sigh of relief. He was going to be pissed later, but that was a Future Sombra problem. Current Sombra really just wanted to get her stomach in order so she could eat. 

The nurse had her answer a few questions, confirm a payment method, then checked she her out and deemed her not urgent enough to warrant being seen right away. Which was fair, simply looking around the waiting room told her that much. 

Still, waiting hours to be seen wasn’t much fun. 

Talon really needed to get a healer. 

She sat against the wall -the chairs were full of people in various states of illness and injury- and tipped her head back and sighed. Nothing to do but wait. Nothing to do but think. 

Symmetra came to mind, but she was no longer a priority, so Sombra pushed the thought of her away. 

She thought of Reaper, and she thought of their conversation. The two inherently led to thoughts of the cowboy.

She really hadn’t been lying to the Reaper. Despite how she went out of her way to contact him, read his messages, find out the goings-on at Overwatch’s Gibraltar base in relation to him…  It was true. It wasn’t Jesse Woodson Clint Joel Morricone Eastwood James McCree that she was interested in.

Jesse McCree was just a means to an end she was determined to meet. A goal she set the day she dragged Reaper out of a compound in Egypt, bloody and spilling tar into the sand. The day he looked at her, an all too human bitter old man, and called her ‘mija’.

She half expected him to die right after, convinced somehow considering her some form of kin would be sure to alert the fates that he was marked for death.

Sombra wasn’t all that sure he wasn’t, actually.

Talon, Mercy, and Overwatch hacked him, twisted him, turned him into the monster reaping premature souls two stories up. Sombra was going to hack him again- one last time. To free him from the curse of thinking of her as a daughter, to throw him back somewhere he’d be safe and not a threat to both her plans and his own misguided ones. To free herself from the fucking curse that was sentimentality. And she had a feeling she would need the cowboy for that. 

For now, he had his agency. Gabriel Reyes was a head for Talon, not a tool. He could turn down jobs as easily as accepting them, suggest them and plan them to ensure Talon’s end goal remained a realistic possibility whilst ensuring his own agenda. Gabriel Reyes was smart. No other word for it. A brilliant tactician that only ever let you think you had the upper hand. 

Trouble was, Reaper wasn’t. Reaper wasn’t Gabe, and when she realized she could separate the two she realized that maybe there was hope for him yet.

“Mariela Mendoza?” A doctor standing by the open door to a check-up room called Sombra’s fake name. Sombra looked up from where she had been glaring a hole into the linoleum and smiled at her. 

* * *

 

“I want a torta.” Sombra announced in the back alley behind the hospital as she waited for Gabriel to shuck on the sweats she threw at him. 

He called her outside once the doctors got through zapping her well again, and she was relieved to find him looking more human than when he left. She could see the silver and black fuzz of his shaved head, and the soft wrinkles around his eyes. Scars and old burn marks covered every bit of skin she could see, but those were puckered pink and didn’t have anything to do with the Reaper. Laughter lines from a life long gone were hidden among Gabriel’s facial hair, and the only smoke visible trailed out of his mouth and out his nostrils at every other exhale. 

Sombra kicked a stray can and watched it bounce off the walls, then go rolling out onto the dimly lit street. 

“Where the fuck do you expect to get a torta at this hour?” He asked her, flipping up the hood on his sweatshirt and pulling at the strings to hide his face. 

“Convenience store. Let’s go.” 

She led the way to a brightly lit OXXO gas station just on the outskirts of Castillo, chattering away at Gabriel until he huffed in annoyance and stomped off, promising to meet her back in her hideout and not to take too long. Sombra flipped off his bulky and entirely solid form as it retreated, but she knew he hated having to feed outside of the battlefield. His was quite the curse: to feel human at the cost of consuming them. 

Ugh, that sounded cannibalistic. 

_ Souls. _ At the cost of consuming human  _ souls. _

She bought her torta and clambered up the store’s wall overlooking the bay to eat it, but opted to stare at the view for a while. The clouds had parted just enough to let the light of the full moon spill onto the water, their edges lit a dusty gold. The moonlight reached out in a thinning line over the water, swaying as the waves lapped onto the shore. 

Sombra tore open the sandwich wrapper with her teeth, then pulled up a holo with her fingertips to check for orders from Talon or alerts from the drive she’d given Symmetra. Talon wanted Reaper to wrap up loose end with the Muertos, and her to see if she could steal the blueprints of the power core from LumériCo. Taking a huge bite of ham and beans and cheese, she acknowledged the message and closed out once she confirmed the architech hadn’t accessed the drive yet. 

“What’s taking her so long?” She muttered unhappily.

“What’s taking  _ you _ so long?” Answered a voice right next to her. 

Sombra yelped and scrambled to keep her balance on the rooftop as Gabriel watched her torta fall from the roof with an evil glint in his eye. 

_“Mi torta!”_ She wailed as she saw it splatter on the ground, meat and lettuce immediately attacked by the gulls lurking around the gas station. Gabriel clutched at his stomach and laughed, phasing to smoke to avoid the backhanded smack she tried to land on him. [12]

‘Laughter lines from a life long gone’ her fucking ass. Bastard made good use of them in this life too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hecka late update again. But this fic ain't ever gon have a tight update schedule, so beware. I'm too... noncommital wavey hand gesture about writing right now to edit this properly so like, excuse the typos and nonsensical sentences that i didnt manage to iron out. 
> 
> [1]What’s up?  
> [2]You two assholes, could you hurry it up?  
> [3]What??  
> [4]goddamned stubborn old man  
> [5]Hey Gabi, go to hell and save me the trouble of taking you there myself, will you?  
> [6]Come on Gabi, let’s go.  
> [7]Where to?  
> [8]Dorado Municipal Hospital  
> [9]”And to what do we owe this bad mood of yours?” she asked. “What did that ungrateful kid throw in your face?”  
> Gabriel laughed humorlessly at that. “Other than the offer?”  
> “Yeah.”  
> [10]But you were the one that told me all those stories about him.  
> [11]Don’t look at me like that, it’s true.  
> [12]My torta!  
>   
> Thanks for reading! I appreciate it!


	5. अब यहाँ से कहाँ जाएँ हम

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sup guess which asshole gave herself a tummyache after chugging chamoy on an empty stomach
> 
> Translations in end notes, ya know, same old

There were few things in life as unnerving as becoming hyper aware of the fact that humans constantly require oxygen. Breathing. A lungful of air was effortless until one became conscious of taking that breath. Then it was a chore, and with the chore came an encroaching fear of losing something that was once automatic, a second nature, something that came just like…

 

Something that came just like breathing. 

 

Satya knew how to draw breath, and she knew she came from the slums of Hyderabad. She knew her parents were proud that she managed to outshine the rest of the students in her school. She knew that Vishkar’s Architech Academy gave her the opportunity for a better life the likes of which her parents could only dream of giving her. The Academy gave her a look into an ideal world, one without destitution, where suffering didn’t exist. Satya cast aside her childhood full of hopelessness the moment she set foot onto the hard light streets of Utopaea, the uniform city made up of rigid lines and bright white, fresh air and sterility. There, standing beneath the sparkling crystalline skyrises of Vishkar’s self-sustaining city, Satya set out to find her purpose. 

She learned how to draw matter from light in the Academy, and was one of the few to prove adept. It was in that academy, peerless and admired, where she formed a philosophy based on what she knew even as a child: without order, there is chaos. The true enemy of humanity is disorder, and order was what Vishkar brought to her life, and what they hoped to bring to the world. The world was a better place because of them, because it had to be. She lived and breathed that truth. The alternative couldn’t stand, and she knew that. 

She knew. She knew, she knew, she thought she’d known. Dorado was supposed to house a development, then a city center; a seed that was meant to grow into a thriving community. Those were the first steps, like so many others. Like Rio de Janeiro. Years into the future, Dorado would become a bustling cityscape like Utopaea. The people of Dorado would have no earthly troubles; they would live in the perfect world that was Vishkar’s design. 

But the people of Dorado, the passersby that glanced her way, the people that offered words of kindness… Those people, the ones deserving of peace and order… would not be the ones living in it. Because of her. Almost because of her. 

 

_ Breathe. Remember to breathe.  _ She told herself, a mantra borrowed from childhood.  _ There would come time to fall apart, to take the pieces and improve upon the design- build something better- but for now… _

 

Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, exhale, and repeat. Breathing was repetitive. Repetitive and calming. All the while maddening and utterly necessary for sustained life. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale, not everything had changed, and not everything was gone. 

Not everything was gone, but she still didn’t know what came after breathing. She brought her hand up to ponder the prize of her new ‘friendship’. Sombra’s flash drive glowed its merry purple between the cracks of her fingers. She had a starting point, but she didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. There was no directive, and all Satya had done in her life was follow Vishkar’s orders. She was a tool in Vishkar’s belt, and a good tool knew how to employ itself. For the company, and for the benefit of their mission statement. 

 

_ Breathe.  _

 

Satya looked up at the neighborhood around her, so like and unlike home, full of eyesores, bright colors, and the clashing stench of dirt and ocean. Everywhere was the same, everywhere was  _ too much. _ Was it too much to work towards order? To believe in Vishkar’s dream? 

Sombra’s apartment lay at her back, and too many questions lay in her head. She could not rush into this. She was emotionally compromised, as proven by the fact that she was alone and panicking after threatening her teammate and rescuing one of Overwatch’s enemies for selfish reasons.  

Hanzo had given her until sunset, 17:45, their designated departure back to Gibraltar. Satya had to either find him or find a way onto LumériCo grounds, and the odds were not in her favor that her involvement in LumériCo’s failed plot had gone unnoticed. If she wanted to find them, she would have to activate her comm. Activating her comm would give both Overwatch and Vishkar her location, and Sombra was still recovering in the apartment above her. 

Her head began to clear as she found something to focus on. She started walking back to where she had hidden away another teleporter on her trip up to Castillo with an unconscious Sombra. She had to get her story straight. Hanzo would not disclose the full extent of her betrayal to the others, at least not until he was certain she wouldn’t run. That meant all her superiors would have to go on were security vids taken at the ziggurat, and Sombra had helpfully kept her pistol on her for most of their interaction. If she reached Hanzo before either of them could give a full report, she could save her position in the company and evade suspicion, give herself time and retain her access to Vishkar’s network to discover if the roots were as rotted as the fruit. 

She found her teleporter hidden in a corner of Castillo’s cobblestone back roads and input commands so it would dematerialize behind her once she went through, and a second later she stepped through a wall of blue light into the abandoned confessional of a small empty chapel. 

The wooden wicker door creaked slightly when she pushed it open and stepped cautiously into the place of worship. The low ceilings were laden with gaudy crystal chandeliers. The sight of the flickering light of candles dancing off the severe faces of the line of statues at the perimeter of the pews was nothing like the temples she remembered from her childhood, wide and open, with their altars piled high with offerings and garlands of marigolds. The sweet cloying smell that hung in the air clung to her nostrils, almost making her miss the faint but pretty scent of incense mixed in with rain.   

But it wasn’t time to reminisce. 

After shutting down the teleporter and confirming its activity log remained blank, she took a breath and reached up to activate her headset and open communications. Not three seconds after she’d made a connection, the incoming call icon lit the inside of her visor.  

“Agent Symmetra. I see you’re in a building not far from the ziggurat. Report.” Sanjay Korpal’s voice in her ear was level. If he or their superiors were displeased with her, he didn’t show it. 

She strode out of the empty building and surveyed the mess she and her team had left in wake of the skirmish. From her handheld she accessed Athena’s map, located their transport’s position, and headed out. 

“Sanjay. Overwatch’s mission has been compromised. Talon was on the scene. They sent an agent to threaten-”

“Yes, we know. Why didn’t you kill her?” He demanded, and Satya turned a street corner away from a line of human volunteers working to clear rubble alongside omnics and other machinery. 

“You know I do not resort to killing hastily, Sanjay. She had inflammatory drivel against Vishkar Corp that could be of threat, and I had no assurance she didn’t have a safeguard in place that would release that information in the event of her death.” She waited for him to respond with something, an affirmation that her caution was sound. He didn’t. “It was too big a risk, so I carried out her orders and came out with a flash drive. I can forward you the files at your earliest convenience, but I’m afraid I only hold a copy.” 

“I assume you saw these files yourself.” 

“I did.”

“And? What are they?”

“Well forged lies utilizing truths to paint us as villains in a similar vein to what Correia dos Santos used against us in Brazil. Such tactics have already proven harmful once. What’s more, she is part of Sombra. She sabotaged my gear. She’s dangerous.” She paused for breath and heard Sanjay give a considerate hum of thought. 

“Yes, the Sombra Collective is known to us. Continue.”

“She threatened me with release of the files to the press and somehow used my Vishkar clearance to hack into LumériCo’s logs.” Satya licked her lips and asked carefully, “Were you aware LumériCo was still in possession of our tech despite the termination of our contract?” 

“What!? No, of course not!”

 

_ Breathe. _

 

Satya swallowed the rise of panic and doubt and went on with her report. “It is only speculation, but they could have caused irreparable damage using our speakers without technician supervision. Who was responsible for seizing our property when the deal was broken? They were incompetent to overlook this, and their incompetence was key to this Sombra forcing me to-” 

“-to do her dirty work for her. I see. This means you will take partial fault for the power core’s destruction.” 

“Destruction?” 

“You attempt to unalign and break the satellite’s connection did not hold for long. LumériCo’s logs show that much. But you were not the only Overwatch agent to go against orders. There were two others.”

Two. Two. Hanzo had not acted alone. “I see.”

“Yes, I see as well…” He trailed off and went silent for a long pause. Satya continued her trek without breaking stride. 

“Sombra has a history with LumériCo… this agent must have been desperate to use you. But take heart, this is one of the better outcomes! You must understand: your actions cannot be attributed to us. At least not right now, Satya. LumériCo lost their main ziggurat, and the people of Dorado will feel betrayed by you, yes, but they will be safer for it. And that is, of course, what matters to us most.” He paused in his speech. “It’s fortunate for us that you were there to uphold Vishkar’s best interests, and- oh. What’s this? Your heart rate is elevated! What is causing you distress?”  Satya cursed the vitals monitor included in her headset and lied. 

“I was unable to leave a good impression and assure the people of Dorado that we are always there to help, as you ordered. My unease is due to the continued presence of our sound tech on those ziggurats.” 

“We will send a representative and another architech to seize our property and see if they can’t salvage some blueprints for their power cores in the confusion.” Logical. After all, clean energy was the reason they’d risked dealing with LumériCo in the first place. 

“I did not implicate us, and kept the knowledge of that tech a secret.” She told him evenly. “But I must admit I fear how the outcome of my actions will affect the placement you negotiated for me with Overwatch. They will no doubt see me as a traitor for going against orders, and take my loyalty to be compromised. Agent Hanzo showed me uncharacteristic mercy, but he carries little influence among the senior ranks. I may not be of further use in this assignment.” 

“Go back to Overwatch’s transport, Agent Symmetra. We will let LumériCo know that you are to be dealt with by us. Board the hovercraft and fly back to Gibraltar with Overwatch’s team. Once you have landed, we will have finished establishing the actions to be taken for your insubordination with Overwatch’s heads in the UN. They’ve proven unworthy of your aid. It’s time you return home.”  

“Understood.” She said, her voice steady and unaffected. Sanjay signed off and she was left alone once more.

He hadn’t asked for Sombra’s location. 

She was a threat, and they didn’t intend to deal with her. That didn’t bode well. Sanjay never left loose strings. She wondered how long before Vishkar managed to send a transport to retrieve her at Gibraltar. Plus, there remained the issue of whatever Hanzo had done to have the ziggurat destroyed.

The sun dipped lower behind Dorado’s skyline, and Satya rushed to the airfield. She beat the sun with approximately seven minutes to spare. The LumériCo guards standing watch at the perimeter to the airfield met her at the gates, escorted her all the way to Overwatch’s sleek white transport, and let her board without a word.

“Hello Agent Symmetra.” Athena’s cool voice called from the intercom when she made it onboard. 

“Athena.” She nodded her head and turned on her heel to press the button to raise the door, but Athena beat her to it. It rose with a thrumming hum, and Athena continued speaking.

“Winston has ordered you to remain on the craft following your arrival.” She told her over the warning beeps of the closing entryway. “Please wait for your detainment.” 

Satya stood in the dark for a few seconds before Athena brought on the overhead lights. She went over to the storage compartments and pulled out a tablet, sat down on a supply crate facing the loading door, and considered the flash drive in her hand. 

But Satya was startled out of her musing by the whine of the walkway lowering once more. She looked between the opening and the tablet in her lap, and quickly stuffed the flash drive into the pocket of her cleavage. She set the tablet to a news site and got a few sentences into an article on peace talks in London before she felt her teammates’ eyes on her. 

Glancing up from the tablet in her hands, she took in their appearances. Hanzo and McCree looked the worst off- their clothes were burnt and tattered, and the latter was splattered in copious amounts of blood. Perhaps they had been the pair that oversaw the destruction of the ziggurat. Fareeha looked exhausted. She was out of her flight suit, and there was a tightness around her eyes that matched the cowboy’s. Angela looked… stressed, as she commonly was. The two criminals they had recruited were nowhere to be seen. 

As for the accused third...

She calmly closed the screen of her tablet, set it on her lap, and calmly held out both wrists. 

“Winston has ordered my detainment.” She said, and she looked straight at the cowboy, the head of the current mission and the one that carried seniority.

But Overwatch once again proved their incompetence by failing to place her under any restraint or arrest. She knew the Orca had a holding cell, but all McCree did was push Hanzo towards her and stomp past her sitting place en route to the cockpit without so much as a glance her way. 

She watched him go, wide-eyed and scandalized, and Hanzo stepped up to her side just as Angela ordered Athena to close the door and Fareeha warned them all to prepare for take-off as she chased the cowboy up into the heart of the aircraft. Angela stayed and began methodically peeling off her combat medic armor, holding onto the wall as Fareeha pulled them shakily away from the ground and into the clouds. 

“I need to run check-ups. You know the drill.” Angela said once they reached cruising altitude and she could keep her balance enough to unclasp her wings. She pulled off her halo piece and tugged her hair free of its ponytail only to brush it back with her fingers and retie it neater. 

Silently, she reached for her staff and a handheld vitals monitor and marched over to inspect them both. It took less than a minute for Angela to look satisfied with her results and then she was gone, and Satya was left to deal with the repercussions of putting their mission in jeopardy. 

But Hanzo didn’t move. He didn’t look her way, and he didn’t speak. Satya resisted the urge to fidget and pull light from her hand to form prisms as was her habit. The silence was, perhaps for the first time in her life, too much. 

“I heard of the explosion.” She said. Hanzo’s eyes flickered down at her, and then back up to the windows. 

“Were you the one who-?” She tried again, and succeeded, because he interrupted her curtly.

“I did nothing. It was Rutledge and Jamison that carried out your plan. They are on the run from the authorities, and Overwatch has severed ties. Agent Pharah put out a statement that they weren’t acting on orders, and that Overwatch does not condone what occurred at the Ziggurat.” 

“I… I see.” Satya paused. “Then to what is the the state of your dress owed?”

“A run-in with the Reaper and close proximity to Pharah’s rockets. Were your-” He cut himself off when Angela reappeared in the cargo bay to pick up her armor and carry it up to the living area. The sound of spurs coming down the stairs froze her, and she looked up to meet McCree’s eyes. Hanzo and Satya watched the pair passively. Hanzo continued in a lowered voice. 

“Were your actions worthwhile? What did you gain by aiding her?”      

She took in his low words. She noted how nothing in his posture or attitude gave away the topic of their discussion to the two other agents present. “You didn’t tell the rest that I threatened you.”  

He scoffed, and Satya remembered the split second of fear she had felt facing off against him, knowing full-well her energy drain would do little to deter him if he chose to fight her. The drain instead of her beam had been a calculated move, a show of trust even as she betrayed his own in her. 

“That I chose to let you go, knowing of your betrayal in full? No.”

“You are angry at me.” She told him, voice back at a medium level. “You are angry, and yet you are kind.” She didn’t understand. They were friends, but both were wary to call their working relationship even that. He owed her very little in terms of kindness. Hanzo finally moved, shifting his weight from one hip to another. He crossed his arms over his chest, and Satya’s curiosity grew. “Why?” 

“I know you place great faith and value in your company.” He told her. Then, in a voice gentler than she’d expected to hear, he added, “I also know how it is to be tested, and to fail. Be grateful your mistake did not come at the price of a life.”

“Neither did yours.” She pointed out.

Hanzo’s eyes left the inky black of the star-speckled sky on the other side of the glass and settled on her. The anger was gone from his features, replaced by a pensive sort of grief. 

Across from them the cowboy was having some manner of one-man stare-off with the doctor standing at opposite ends of the cargo bay. Satya looked from them to him, and catalogued the mottled bruises on his tattooed arm and over his shoulder and chest. She heard McCree and Dr. Ziegler go up to the main level, and Hanzo finally broke away from his spot standing at her side.   

“Come. You are due for a debrief.” He said. She followed him up to the main deck as he told her how he’d told the team of her remorse, and how McCree had tried to use the situation as an excuse to leave and hunt down the Reaper. She heard the anger in Hanzo’s voice spike then, and attributed it to their strange partnership and his stranger affection. He told her that the Junkers had stepped in and kept McCree from reasserting himself as an outlaw. 

“But now they stand accused of a crime that should be mine to bear.” Satya finished for him. He nodded, and walked past the bickering doctor and cowboy to reach the pull-down bunks that lined the port wall of the transport. 

“You will find a solution that assures this is not held against them.” 

“I will,” she vowed. He nodded, and she took a seat next to him on the lowered bunk. 

* * *

 

Despite her aversion towards sleeping on moving vehicles, Satya found she had dozed off sometime in the night when she woke to Fareeha’s announcement that they were twenty minutes from Gibraltar. Hanzo was gone, but she found her hair braided and held together by a bow tied with his golden scarf. She drew back the curtain on her bunk and cast a look around herself. She sighed. Winston had ordered she be detained, and she woke up alone and unguarded. Foolish. They were all foolish. 

Nevertheless, she appreciated the privacy. 

In Gibraltar, the clock was approaching midday. They landed at the dock and were greeted by a harried looking Winston and a melancholy Lena. He apologetically ordered them all to the briefing room, and the team followed him in various states of dishevelment and insomnia. Further in, they saw Genji, Zenyatta, and Lúcio slumped against the doors to the base inside the warehouse.

“No one got any sleep here either, did they?” Fareeha asked, and Zenyatta nudged the two at his side to stand and follow after the troupe.

“This has been a stressful revelation for all.” Zenyatta said, hovertech straining a bit to keep pace with Dr. Ziegler’s brisk walk.

“Mei took on damage control.” Genji added, keeping stride effortlessly. 

“They wouldn’t let us at the reporters.” Lúcio said mid-yawn, jogging to keep up. In front of her, Hanzo and his brother fell into hushed whispers, and at one point, Hanzo shot a look back at her, a question burning in his eyes. 

But he had no time to ask it, as soon they were filing into the briefing room to be greeted by Mei. She stood at the head of the table arguing in rapid-fire Mandarin with someone on a holo pulled from Athena’s console, with Snowball at her shoulder. Winston went to stand beside her and Mei ended the call. Her gaze swept their lineup and lingered on Satya, giving her a look of such disappointment that Satya couldn’t help but cringe.

“That was Lucheng.” She informed them, eyes still on her, and Satya couldn’t look away. “A job offer, actually. On the moon. I had to break the news we’re…” 

“Grounded. By the UN. We’re grounded. I haven’t been grounded  _ since _ the moon.” Winston huffed, and Satya felt the already nauseating ball of unease in her stomach clench. 

If she hadn’t lied, they wouldn’t have installed that core, and  LumériCo’s ziggurat would still be standing. The issue of the speakers could have been dealt with differently, and Winston wouldn’t be looking so put out by the lost opportunity to revisit his childhood home.  Satya considered giving them an apology, no matter how useless she thought it would be. But just then, Lena popped into the room with a tray precariously full of teacups and ordered them all to sit. 

“Reinhardt’s been locked up in his room.” She said conversationally as she made her way around the long table distributing the drinks. “Torbjörn tried talking him out, but he’s not doing so well either. He’s with Bastion in the garden, so he’s not alone. But Reinhardt… well… uh… I don’t know who’s been up to see him.” 

Puzzled, Satya leaned towards Zenyatta. “What is this about?”

“I believe Lena is referring to the distress some of our senior members have exhibited since the discoveries made during your mission.” He told her serenely from his seat next to hers. 

Satya nodded, understanding. “You are referring to the discovery of Jack Morrison in Dorado.” 

Zenyatta couldn’t blink, but the pause he gave implied he just had. “And the revelation that Reaper is Gabriel Reyes.”

“The… what?” She quickly thought back to what Hanzo had told her during the flight, but couldn’t recall any mention of Overwatch’s infamous traitor. “The black ops leader?”

Zenyatta’s answer was cut short by a gruff snort of air from the head of table. They both quieted and turned their attention towards Winston.     

“Okay…” Winston sighed. “I guess… first thing’s first. Vishkar has gotten into contact with the UN, and I understand they’ve spoken to you as well, Agent Symmetra?” 

Stiffening at the roomful of eyes suddenly on her, Satya answered slowly. “They have.” She shifted her posture and sat poised with her hands gracefully clasped over her thighs. 

“So you know you’ve been placed under house arrest until it’s agreed what further disciplinary actions to take against you?”  

No, but it was an adequate measure to take. “Yes.” 

“Then you are dismissed. Athena will keep track of your movements within the base and will set off all alarms and precautions should you attempt to leave or block her with your headset again. Unless you have anything else to report?”

Satya shook her head and promptly abandoned her seat, shoulders stiff and mindful of the attention aimed at her retreating back. Her posture relaxed at the swish of the door behind her. With a heavy exhale, she brought her hand up to massage the junction between her shoulder and artificial arm. She added a diagnostic test to her list of things to complete by nightfall, right after checking the files that seemed to be burning a hole through her chest.

Based on prior missions, and taking into account the emotional state of the agents present at the meeting, Satya estimated it would take an hour for someone to bother to check on her. That would give her plenty of time to begin examining the contents of the flash drive.

From down the hall of the dorms, Satya was pleased to see that her bags had been deposited at the foot of her door, and she crossed retrieving her luggage from the transport off her mental checklist. Nudging them into the room distractedly with her feet, she made a beeline to her desk and pulled out a dock to plug in the old-fashioned drive and scan it for any bugs or malware. She quickly put away her architech gear, deposited her comms on her desk next to the dock, and started parting laundry to wash. After, as she waited for the scan to complete, she finished up her mission report and sent it off to Winston.

When the check resulted in no red flags, she pulled up her desk chair and let the drive open its contents. She got to work muddling through the mass of picture files and documents, too preoccupied to pay attention to the ping on her Overwatch-issued handheld comm. Its screen flashed white, and she clicked on what looked like blueprints of their deconstructed compound speaker systems when —

_“Porque te tardaste tanto, Symsym?”_ [1]

Satya didn’t startle past a slight stiffening of her shoulders, partly due to her exhaustion and a dry sense of resignation. Sombra had given herself control over her phone,  _ somehow. _ Her cheeky face was propped on the heels of her hands on the desk of her apartment. Satya could make out the window and her bed just within view of the holo’s borders. 

No bugs and no malware, but apparently her systems couldn’t pick up a trace. Of course. Of course she couldn’t have a brief respite from the overwhelming  _ too much _ of everything even in the comfort of her own dormitory room. 

“Do you mind?” She said testily, and turned her attention back to her work. From her peripherals, she saw Sombra’s mouth open and then give pause.  

“Bad time?” she asked. Satya huffed. 

“I don’t presume it matters to you, but I would appreciate it if you dropped your aggravating habit of intruding upon my privacy.” 

And perhaps she accentuated by reaching and tapping on her computer’s screen with just a bit too much force, because Sombra’s eyebrows lifted in tandem. Then she laughed sheepishly, shrugged, and suddenly the holo closed in on itself.  Satya blinked at the cut connection icon on her phone screen. She hadn’t expected that to work. 

And then the phone started to ring.

Across the top of the screen flashed a blocked out contact name. The architech stared at it, as if staring at it would help the situation make any semblance of sense. She tapped her finger over the transparent screen to open the call. Immediately, the phone requested permission to engage the holo feature. She agreed to that as well, and then she was again staring at a small holo of Sombra’s face instead of the phone itself. 

Neither said a word. Satya continued to stare. Sombra let up after a minute and squirmed. 

_ “No me mires asi _ , you’re the one who answered!” [2]

“You called.” 

“You could’ve sent me to voicemail.”

Satya hummed and turned back to her computer. “Athena is monitoring me.” She said offhand. 

Sombra snorted. Satya glanced and saw her lips spread in a smug grin. 

“She thinks she is. Smart AI you’ve got there. We’ve got half an hour before she catches me, maybe less. Gave me a lot more trouble than most, ‘specially since Winston bumped up her firewall after I got Reaper in last — what was it? April? ”

“What do you want?” Satya cut her off and rubbed at her temples with her prosthetic fingers. Zenyatta’s mention of the Reaper fresh in her mind, she whispered half to herself, “Gabriel Reyes…?”

“Gabi? He just left, actually. They all just left. Dorado’s safe and sound, all thanks to you!” She said. Satya didn’t have to think to pick out the sarcasm in her voice. With another stab of guilt, she remembered that it was her hesitation that led to the hacker getting hurt. And right on cue, Sombra shifted in her seat and gave a low groan of discomfort.  

“How is your injury?” She asked, and pointedly ignored the wide-eyed look Sombra gave her at her concern. “Do you not have a medic in your terrorist group?” 

“I’d hesitate to call them a healer, they’re more of a mad scientist.” Sombra dodged the question.

Satya paused reading the sound tech plans just long enough to shoot her a bored look. 

Sombra huffed, and leaned back in her chair with her arms crossed over her ample chest. “I’m grounded. The ‘medic’ is using my injury as an excuse, but that’s stupid. They told me to stick to my assignments, which is Reaper Talk for  _ ‘para de meter la nariz donde no, Sombrita!’ _ and that’s no fun.” [3]

“Why? 

“I don’t know, they don’t exactly let me sit in on the board meetings.”

Board meetings. Talon had a board of directors. “And so you’re bothering me.” 

“Well this is your fault. You were uncooperative, and then you let your boyfriend shoot me!”

Her statement and the wounded expression that came with it was enough to cause Satya to laugh shortly. “You blackmailed me, I was cooperative enough. And Hanzo is no such thing.” 

Sombra gave her a disbelieving look and then nodded at Satya’s chest. She looked down and saw the soft gold of Hanzo’s scarf holding her braid together, draped over her shoulder. 

She swept it back and added, “The mere thought is absurd,” for emphasis. 

Sombra hummed in doubt. Satya scoffed, and resigned herself to the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to concentrate with the nuisance she’d willingly let into her day. She continued to idly scroll through the files on the drive, but her attention was elsewhere.

“What do you want?” She repeated, seeing as her conversation partner was less talkative than their history proved her to be. 

A long-nailed hand reached up and scratched at the owner’s cheek, right below a birthmark. “Oh. Just to say I owe you one for the ride home. Cash that in whenever you need to, Symsym.” 

“That is all?” 

“I don’t like debts. And Vishkar hasn’t sent any of your associates to take me out, and I know they do quick work — so, I’m assuming you’re nicer than you let on.”

Satya frowned, thinking back on her conversation with Sanjay the previous day. “They won’t try to go after you. They didn’t ask what I did with you.” 

“Probably thought you left me dead in a ditch.” Sombra’s shoulders dropped, losing some of their tension. Satya didn’t bother telling her she was wrong.

But she did want to prove her own theory correct. She swiveled in her chair and put her right elbow on the desktop and propped the side of her head in her hand. Finally facing Sombra, she extended one finger and pointed at the computer screen next to her. 

“And risk you having a failsafe in place to release these files to the public?”

Satya saw a flash of white behind lips painted a dark purple.  _ “Sabia que eras lista.” _ [4]

“I don’t know what friends you’re wont to having, but as I understand it, it’s considered rude to speak in an unshared language.”

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,  _ chula, _ but I’m not exactly polite company.”

“That is true.” She agreed easily. Sombra gave an affronted,  _ “Óyeme! No tienes que ponerte de acuerdo tan rápido, grosera!” _ [5]

“Case in point.” 

Sombra grumbled. With a slight wince, she rolled her neck and Satya heard a faint crack. “Right, well. Enough about me. How about you? How’d your people take it?”

Satya felt her frown slip back into place. She shifted and brought her legs up to settle cross-legged in her seat. “They didn’t confine me to quarters as I expected them to.” She admitted. Then she immediately cursed herself internally and wondered why on earth she’d told her that. 

But Sombra just frowned too. “Why would they? You’re not a child.” 

Satya shrugged it off and continued wondering why she was sitting alone in her room speaking to a Talon agent as if they were friends. Or as if they had anything more than the self-proclaimed friendship Sombra assured her they had. But perhaps that was why it was easy. Refreshing. Sombra knew not to expect anything from her. 

“Two other agents took the fall for me.” She finally answered. “They wouldn’t have had to if I hadn’t betrayed their trust.”

Sombra’s frown deepened. “Yeah, about that. You’ve got an interesting set of morals, Symsym.” 

Satya snorted. “And you are one to talk?” The accusation of  _ Talon _ went unsaid. At her back and past her door she heard the clack of footsteps, and she stiffened with her left arm outstretched to end the call. But whoever it was passed, and she relaxed once more. Sombra waited patiently before speaking, annoyance written stark on her face. 

“I’m not the one with the prissy holier-than-thou attitude. And I wouldn’t sell my soul like you did.” 

“What would you know? You hardly seem the type to have anything worth holding onto.” Satya heard her own voice begin to rise, and thoughts on the people just past her doorway, she forced herself to lower it. “My company is my life. I can hardly abandon them on one questionable altercation! Vishkar is all I know. I am who I am, and accomplished all that I have because of them. I owe them everything!”

“Even with the proof staring you in the face, you still want to believe in your precious cause.” The disgust from their discussion at the ziggurat was back in Sombra’s voice. Satya hated it just as much now as she did then. She had the option of ending the call. She was considering it; getting rid of the  _ too much, _ going back to her duties and putting some order back in her life. There was no sense to this conversation, no order. And without order, there was only chaos.

 

_ The enemy of humanity is disorder. _

 

“The cause itself is not misguided!”  

Eyebrows creased and bunched together, Sombra angrily asked, “How old were you when Vishkar found you?” 

Taken aback by the change in topic, Satya took a minute before answering. When she did, she was unsure. “Twelve, at most.” 

“Twelve? Not too young, then. Definitely old enough to know right from wrong.” 

“What does this have to do with —?”

“I was already an orphan at that age.” Sombra said, and the stoic architech didn’t react to the interruption with anything other than a minute lift of her eyebrows. “And I had been for a long time.” 

Sombra saw that Satya didn’t intend to speak, so she kept going. Satya watched her hands move, her gestures animate and exaggerated. “Los Muertos took me in. I went to them, but they took me in. They made me need them, or make me think I needed them by telling me they needed me. A second family, you know? They made me depend on them, and without really thinking about it I knew that I had no choice but to stay. I didn’t even want the choice. Life was good with them. I didn’t leave until someone forced my hand.” 

Satya’s interest piqued. “Who?” 

“Not my point. Stay on topic,  _ linda.” _ She waved her question off. “The point is, I believed in their cause. I had friends in Los Muertos. Attachments. I had to cut them loose to… well, nothing as noble as saving them. More save myself and them by extension. But they were all I had. They were all I knew and I was who they needed me to be, but when the time came to leave, I did.”

“Our cases are not the same.” 

“No, I know.” Sombra leaned closer to her camera, and Satya was forced to look her in the eye. “But I know what you’re thinking. You think if the cause isn’t lost, then not everyone at Vishkar is in on the dirty schemes. There’s more of  _ you, _ and you’re going to try and clear out the rot at headquarters in Utopaea, aren’t you?” 

Satya didn’t move. Sombra clicked her tongue and leaned back into her chair. 

“See, that’s what I’m saying. You need to learn to cut your losses.” Sombra waited for a response, but got none and clarified, “You should leave, I mean, is what I’m saying. Leave Vishkar.” She rolled her eyes at the disbelieving look Satya gave her, but soldiered on. “Look, you said it yourself: you’re not naive. Once your intentions are clear, Overwatch won’t be able to support you. After this shitshow the world authorities are going to be on your guys’ ass. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Petras Act is amended again.” 

“And how would leaving benefit me?” Satya asked incredulously.

“Once you come clean to clear the names of the agents that took your fall, Vishkar is going to shut you down and paint a pretty target on your back faster than you can blink. Now say you somehow crack open the Vishkar case before that, and you come out of it alive. Will Overwatch even keep you, Symsym?”

“Yes.” Satya said without hesitation, but so quickly that she knew her answer came out of a place of fear instead of assurance of her place there. Sombra seemed to see right through her.

“After what you just did? They know they don’t have your loyalty, and you don’t have the history McCree or that ninja have with your old heros.”

“They are not the type to — ” 

“Noble or not, they can’t protect you. Especially not out in the field. If they had LumériCo wrapped around their pinky finger, you can bet your hot ass that they have  _ a lot _ more friends in their corner. You’d be a risk, and Overwatch is on shaky grounds as it it.” She smiled again, but it lacked amusement. “You’ll have to go underground, and I have friends in low places.” 

Had this all been some weak attempt at recruitment? “You mean Talon.” 

“I think I have an application form in my desk.” She joked, but ducked down to rummage around in her desk anyway. Satya knew it was for show. She was beginning to see that much of what Sombra did was a performance. 

“The Widowmaker made Hanzo the same offer, and my answer matches his.” She said. Sombra emerged from behind her desk to pout. 

“Sure? We could use you. No? Ah well, I tried.” She didn’t sound at all put-out. 

Satya opened her mouth to say as much, but then there was a knock at her door, and both she and Sombra jumped in surprise. 

Without another word, Satya reached out and ended the call. Sombra didn’t protest, she merely tried catching sight of the door from within the limited view afforded to her by her phone’s camera. Satya shut down her monitor and made sure the holo closed down and the phone screen went black before rushing off to the door, aware that Sombra still possibly had Athena disabled in her quarters and that voice commands would be useless.

By habit she tried smoothing down her hair before greeting her guest, but she stilled her hand when it got caught in the twists of her braid. Instead she reached out and grasped the door’s handle and pushed it open a few inches.

And there stood Hanzo.

 

What was the saying?  _ ‘Shaitaan ka naam lo’ _ ? [6]

 

He was fresh out of the shower. Satya could smell the pine scent of his soap, clinging to his wet hair and the clean robes he’d changed into since landing. She greeted him politely and stood to the side to invite him in and he stormed inside, strung tighter than even she was. 

“You asked her after what she meant about Siberia.” He said, standing in the center of her room, eyes trained intently on her face. 

Satya sighed and shut the door. “I gave everything to Winston in my report. Surely you thought to ask him or Athena?”

“The thought occurred, but still I chose to come. Now will you humor me, or do you have any other pressing matters to attend to?”

Satya glared. Then she spied the flashdrive glowing purple on its dock and remembered that Sombra’s brand was easily identified. She walked over and offered Hanzo the seat at her desk while she took the flash drive in hand behind her back. Then she moved to the side and sat on the bed. He opted to stand stubbornly. She looked to the chair, Hanzo grunted and sat down, and she promptly gave him what he’d come for.

“Sombra was ordered to infect Genji with the God Program stolen from Helix to see if a cyborg could be turned just as omnics, to see if their programming would betray them in cases as severe as your brother’s.” She said, trying to recall her conversation with Sombra as close to word-for-word as she could accomplish to ease his mind. “Talon has agents that could benefit from undergoing a transformation similar to Genji’s, and Talon was looking to pinpoint any weaknesses before they went ahead and performed their own operations.”

“And did it?” Hanzo asked. Satya shook her head.

“No. It would render him inoperational, but it wouldn’t infect a cyborg like it could an omnic. Sombra merely had to download his specs to see for herself, and she only slowed his non-vital systems for show. She is the one tasked with overseeing their God Program. She attempted to defend herself by saying that it wasn’t her fault Zaryanova refused to treat him as an equal.”

Hanzo took the information silently. He didn’t comment on Sombra’s message. Instead he studied Satya’s face. His eyes trailed down to linger on the rope of her braid, and the scarf still tied to it. 

“You could have trusted me.” He said. Reproach was clear in his voice.

“I know. Now, I know.” She sighed again and stared out her window. “But in the face of everything I knew falling apart, I chose only to trust myself. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

It was the best apology he would get out of her. He accepted it without another word and left.

And Satya was finally left alone. 

* * *

 

“Your arm is in perfect working order. Would you like me to copy and download the changes you’ve made today onto the design files?” Athena asked her from her terminal over on Winston’s desk. 

Somehow, it had taken Sombra’s question to remind Satya that she was still able to tend to business elsewhere on the base. With Sanjay’s promise that Vishkar would call for her removal and return, she didn’t know how long she’d have to wrap up a few of the experiments she had running in joint with Mei. She wanted to make sure that in the event that she didn’t return, at least Mei would have what she needed to continue on alone. 

Even if she hadn’t spoken to her all day. Mei-Ling was a good woman. Satya doubted this silent treatment wouldn’t last until she was gone. She hoped. 

Athena repeated her query and Satya looked up from where she had been fussing over a shield she’d tried convincing Mei to put on her person, just in case her habit of encasing herself in ice left her more a sitting duck than protected. 

“Yes please, Athena.”  She said. Another item off her list. She still had to send Sombra’s files to Sanjay as a gesture of good faith. 

Dusk went and night came, and Satya remained alone in the labs. It was unnatural- usually she worked in close quarters with the two other scientists at base. The quiet was eerie. Too much.  _ Too much. _ Satya dropped the shield projector and reminded herself to keep moving, keep busy. It wasn’t time to fall apart. 

 

_ Breathe. _

 

Athena never noticed the twenty or so minute lapse in her surveillance, and so Satya assumed she was in the clear since landing. So, when Winston wandered into the labs after team dinner, Satya simply squared her shoulders and prepared herself for his long overdue reprimand. 

He paused at the doorway, mouth set in a frown. His glasses were slipping down his face, and he adjusted them before addressing her. 

“Agent Symmetra?” 

He never called her that outside of an assignment. “Winston, please.” 

Winston moved towards her, a stern look on his face despite the sadness in his eyes. “Satya,” he said, “We must speak about your report, but first… Vishkar… they reached out. They’ve asked for your immediate return to their headquarters in Utopaea once you’ve wrapped up your high priority experiments here.” 

It was happening. It was all happening so fast. Just when she thought she’d grown accustomed to the base and the team’s companionship —

“They’ll send someone over to pick you up.” He didn’t notice the panic behind her blank face, he simply kept speaking. “Johnson in the Geneva office told me it would only be a matter of days. Do you want me to fight it, or…?” 

“No, Winston. That will not be necessary.” She said, mind racing. His words were another confirmation to what she already knew was to happen. But hearing him say it made it all the more real. She was going back. She reminded herself to breathe.  _ Inhale, exhale, all was not lost. _

There was zero margin for error. If she was to discover the truth and amend for her mistake, she had to go to the source. No matter the risk. 

She wasn’t out of her depth, but in Utopaea Sanjay and the rest of the Board had the same home field advantage as she did. No, she was at a disadvantage. She’d been gone for months, she couldn’t risk getting trapped by a lack of information without someone on the outside ready to pick up where she left off. 

“Uh… Satya?” She heard his voice, but she ignored his concern. It was undeserved, and besides, there was too much to think about, too much to plan, too much to do. She couldn’t do it alone.

But who to reach out to? Mei and Winston were wonderful additions to field missions, but they were scientists at heart. The cowboy apparently had a history as one of Overwatch’s best covert agents, and as such perhaps only he would be able to understand her position. He was certainly approachable enough, but the flaw was that she didn’t like him. No, Hanzo would be her first choice- his record as a mercenary was spotless. They worked well together, and he had the skills necessary for infiltration. He was her friend. He was her friend, and under duress she had chosen not to trust him, and that misstep may have cost her his trust in turn. But perhaps that wouldn’t be enough for him to abandon her to her fate. After all, friends helped friends.

 

_ Friends help friends. _

 

Sombra’s words came unbidden to crash into her inner turmoil, throwing the plan she’d been formulating out of alignment.

No. Sombra would be the absolute final measure. What irked Satya was that Sombra was equally as capable as Hanzo, if not more. With her cloaking and her knowledge of the security systems… She’d already found a way through Vishkar’s security using Symmetra even if she was in no way cleared for that level of intel. Who else could manage to do what she’d done? Who was better suited to the task of taking down Vishkar’s criminal operation?

 

Oh. 

Oh, no. 

 

There was someone else. Someone who had managed all that Sombra had, and on their own too. A cold prickling of discomfort ran up Satya’s back as her mind shifted through her options and came to a stop on the only viable one. 

“Satya?” Winston’s face came into focus in front of her, his golden eyes wide in worry. “Satya, are you well?”

She shook her head mutely, not trusting herself to speak past the heavy unease twisting in her gut. 

 

She would have to ask the musician.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so, it's been a while. sorry about that. but thank you for reading!!! i love you!!!!
> 
> Translations:
> 
> [1]Why’d you take so long, Symsym?  
> [2]Don’t look at me like that,  
> [3]Quit sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong  
> [4]I knew you were smart.  
> [5]Hey! You don’t have to agree so quickly!  
> [6]Speak of the devil  
> 


End file.
